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  2020-09-08

  Waiting for an Elevator

  This video is a representation of how hard COVID has made life for college students, but more importantly, it is a representation of the students' willingness to cooperate and work with each other to make situations flow as smoothly as possible. As first-year college students, we were all incredibly overwhelmed and stressed out by entering a new chapter of our lives, in an entirely new setting that we weren’t used to. In essence, we were thrown into a mess that we didn’t know the outcome of. In fact, we still don’t know the outcome of it. In fact, before the pandemic happened, we all thought we were going to Greece, Hungary, or New Zealand for our study abroad Nuin program. Instead, our options slowly changed to Canada, Ireland, and London, and then eventually dwindled down to Boston or Dublin. This resulted in not only disappointment but a sense of unease for our first semester as college students. We ended up being housed at a local hotel about a mile away from campus. And although none of us liked the rules Northeastern University set for us, regarding guests, partying, and common spaces, we all understood that this was not only to keep us safe but to keep the city of Boston safe as well. I think it’s easy for college students, particularly Northeastern Students, to forget that we are living in a pandemic with serious consequences to the community. Us students are fortunate enough to be getting tested every three days, giving us a blanket of security that ensures we don’t have the virus. But it’s easy to forget that we live in a metropolitan area where others aren’t getting tested. Therefore, if we end up spreading it to other members of the community, we know within three days, but other people within the community don’t. Hence the importance of continuing to maintain social distancing and mask-wearing. This video is one of the hallmark moments of Nuin students maintaining these ideas and bringing a sense of awareness to the community. Because we live in a hotel, there are other guests that are usually spending the weekend in the hotel, and therefore we do interact with visitors frequently. In one such instance, the elevators were backed up in the building, as it was peak “rush hour” and two of the elevators were broken, and there were only 4 people per elevator. This video shows that even without tape on the floor to guide people to stand six feet apart, they did. Even though students could have easily broken rules and gotten into large groups into the elevators, they didn’t. Nuin Boston came together as a community, not only through painting social distancing but upholding the mentality that we should all look out for each other and put others’ needs before our own. I think many people have a lot of negative things to say about the COVID pandemic, which is understandable for many reasons. Even the first thing someone will find when they look up Nuin Boston is a story of how 11 students got kicked out even before classes started. But there will always be outliers. There will always be those that don’t care about others, that will continue to break rules regardless of their consequences. But it is the students and members of the community that care about the well-being of others that will continue to make a positive impact.