When Ali Thorell moved to Boston in August, she took only what she could carry on the plane. At 34, the Philadelphia native has a master's degree in education from Chaminade University of Honolulu and is studying at BU for a second master's, this one in health education. "I was feeling sick about all the stuff I had accumulated over six years in Hawaii," she says. "I thought: 'How can I start over and not accumulate all of this stuff again? Who knows where I will be in another five years?' " Other than a bed, she has not purchased anything new for the apartment she shares with roommates: Her bureau came from the Salvation Army, her bike from Craigslist. "So what if I don't buy a notebook, if I use scrap paper instead?" Thorell says. "That's not much. But I can teach my students to do that, and then they can go home and teach their families." And that's how revolutions are made.
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