Kobe Bryant Randomly Sits in a Class at Boston College
If you’re visiting Boston, a city filled with top-notch educational institutions, you might as well brush up on your education.
At least, that’s what Los Angeles Lakers’ shooting guard Kobe Bryant did on Thursday, when he was in town ahead of Friday night’s game against the Celtics.
Bryant, who can’t play this weekend due to an injured knee, decided he would make use of his time by popping over to Chestnut Hill to sit in on an International Marketing class at Boston College.
“I had just begun the class with an example of the how the NBA is a model of successful international marketing and how Kobe Bryant is its biggest star, when suddenly the door opened and in walked Kobe,” claims Marketing Professor Nick Nugent, who was teaching the first class of the semester. “It was surreal.”
Nugent said Bryant told students that he didn’t go to college, “but I love to learn and international marketing is something I am interested in.”
Bryant stayed in the class for two hours, taking notes, and even asking questions. He then signed autographs for the 40 students in the class, according to officials at Boston College.
When class was dismissed, Bryant apparently took time to snap more photos with fans out in the hallway.
The unexpected visit, of course, caused a commotion late Thursday night, and sent social media users into a flurry of tweets:
Josh Reed, who stumbled on the scene on his way to an information session on campus, said the Lakers star had a sense of humor, and the experience was “awesome.”
“[He didn’t say] too much, he actually jokingly apologized to a kid who had him on his fantasy team,” said Reed, who shared the above photo on Twitter. “Nice guy though, took a lot of pics. It was awesome, I was walking…then heard he was over there, so I ran over and caught him.”
When all was said and done, and after he left campus, Bryant tweeted out a “thanks” to students for letting him disrupt their lesson.
Learn. Learn. Learn. thank you #BC #internationalmarketing Education never stops.
— Kobe Bryant (@kobebryant) January 17, 2014
Celebrities seem to like to flock to Boston’s colleges and classrooms quite often. Earlier this year, Patriots star Julian Edelman made an appearance at an Emerson College social media class, where he talked about how he uses Twitter to interact with fans.
In November, with Kim Kardashian in tow, rapper Kanye West popped into Harvard to discuss the importance of art and architectural design in front of 300 students at the Graduate School of Design.
