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  2020-11-18

  Attending College in Boston During the Pandemic

  I graduated high school in 2020 and decided to attend Northeastern University in Boston, MA. For my first semester I planned on traveling to London to study there through the NU.in program (program offered by Northeastern for alternate admission). Unforuntaly, once COVID ravaged through the world, we were no longer allowed to go to London. Instead, I decided to start my college career as a normal Northeastern student living in Boston. I think this experience is important to share because it gives one insight on what college life is like in a city school. Northeastern has very strict rules for obvious reasons, testing every 2-3 days, limited indoor gatherings, mask mandate on campus and much more. This is the safest way to go about this semester and it has allowed us to stay open, but if does hinder the college experience for students. It can be very hard to make friends in college and then on top of that, there is a pandemic which makes it hard to meet people under normal circumstances. Students voiced their concerns over this and got some rules to change (allowing a single guest per room, opening more meeting spaces, indoor dining etc). The school aspect is also very interesting, I think the majority of kids have 75% of their classes online, meaning learning through a zoom call/recorded video. Although it gets old quickly, learning online is a really good skill because it forced me to start taking learning into my own hands and be more independent with my work. However, I feel like this skill is a skill all college students learn early on in order to pass classes but I think that it was accelerated this semester due to the lessened student-to-teacher interactions. Overall, the experience has been an interesting one; there has been many highlights including exploring Boston and living in a hotel, but there have been lowlights as well, including, harder to be motivated during class, may be harder for some to meet people.