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< Back Stefanie's Story Stefanie discusses how COVID-19 affected her college experience as a student athlete. As well as the impact that quarantine had on her social life as an incoming college student. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 03:14 I think like as a person, I’ve grown a lot socially since I’ve been at college. I know COVID, when COVID happened and everybody was in quarantine it was like, I didn’t really see that many people. I only saw my family like my mom, my dad, and my sister and like occasionally my friends but like my parents were really stuck on no seeing anybody like during COVID. So I kind of like lost all my socialness, I guess, like all my abilities to be like social so I kind of had to relearn that when I came back here, or when I came to college. So I mean it was a struggle just getting into like this new world of like everything is so social. Especially, like in college, like everybody goes out and stuff like that, everybody goes to parties, and like everything is just super social with your friends. So, I just kind of had to learn how to change from COVID and not seeing anybody to seeing like hundreds of people a day like in my classes and stuff like that. So like last year, I was a freshman and well I graduated high school early, I came to college early. But it was still COVID and so we had all of our classes online, everybody was on Zoom so you weren’t really able to make friends and really my only friends were on my team. So then last year, it was the like first time that like everybody had been back into full classrooms and stuff like that and everybody is just trying to get into the flow of it again everybody’s like relearning everything that they lost like during COVID. And last year was especially difficult for me because I was trying to like extend and make like friends off the team and stuff like that and create like connections off of like my team or outside of my comfort zone but it was just super hard because it was everybody is so used to who they already talk to. But I think this year especially, I moved in with some people on the soccer team, so I’ve been able to like branch out and make connections with like them obviously. Just my social circle is just way bigger than it was last year and that’s something that I really struggled with last year. But this year it’s definitely a lot better and like I said before, it’s something that I work for, instead of, I was trying to let it come to me but it really wasn’t and it was hard because it was like when everybody gets in classes with like 200, like 400 people especially at UMass like when we have classes that big like nobody's really gonna talk, everybody is going to keep to themself. So like it was kind of like I had to teach myself how to go outside my comfort zone especially like I definitely had to go outside my comfort zone deciding to live with three girls I had never met before. I mean I was friends with one of their teammates and I have never meet the three girls that I live with before. It was definitely outside of my comfort zone. I was definitely scared just like what would happen. But, I’m definitely glad that I took the decision because now I’m just so happy with where I’m at socially so I’m definitely glad that I went outside my comfort zone, and I took that risk. I think like college and like being this age has also taught me how to reach out and make friends it’s not like everything is going to come to you and everything is going to find you, it’s like you need to go find like what you want. Previous Next

< Back Jacqueline's Story Jacqueline talks about the most important person in her life; her mom. She describes her perseverance, strength, and love for both her and her brother. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 03:40 Can you tell me about the most important people in your life? Yeah, I would say definitely my mom, for obvious reasons. She's amazing. And she's definitely my biggest role model. My mom started, she went to college to be an accountant. And then she hated that, because she didn't like how accountants were very, to the point didn't have like much of a sense of humor. And she, she's such a big person. She's such a talker, so that was important to her. So then she went into health care, she went to nursing school. When I was about four, my parents got divorced me, my brother, and my mom went to go live with my uncle. And my aunt, my cousin in born, which is where we then bought our house. between in between when they got divorced, she was in the middle of nursing school, so I can't imagine how hard that was for her. So being with my living with my aunt uncle definitely made it easier for her. And we spent a lot of time with them one on one, then she started working down in P town, which is about maybe two hours from my house, maybe a little less. And she would go every day work double shifts, drive all the way home sleep and do it all over again. I don't know how she did it. And then she started teaching nursing assistants. And she loved it. She was working just as a teacher under the owner. And then the owner decided that she was going to sell the company. And my mom was devastated because she loved her job. So she ended up buying the school from her. She had the school for a while, probably like 10 years, it was definitely hard because the financial situation wasn't always constant. Because that's obviously what happens when you own your own business. And it will add everything fell on her if like one of her teachers couldn't go. So there were times where it was just her running the business. So she's definitely worked very hard. And then about three or four years ago, this nursing home agency reached out to her asking them asking her to teach all of their and all of their facilities. And she took it almost right away. She's still with the company. And that's the company that I've also worked through. I think as I'm aging, I'm becoming closer with my mom in a different way. Like we're becoming more like friends than mother and daughter even though she's always been like a friend to me and all my friends go to my mom for any problems, any advice, which I think is super important. Every year on my birthday since my birthday on Christmas Eve My mom always made sure no one could say the words Christmas Eve on my birthday. It was always Jacqueline's birthday. And she would always set up she'd had balloons and she loves cards. So she'd have like a million cards. And like just a whole setup and it was always so grand and special. And so that's every year. That's definitely something that I'm looking forward to. I would like to be as good of a mother as she has been to me. I think she's done. Such a good job raising my brother and I She's worked very hard. She hasn't had a lot of extra money or extra time or anything. So I think just making sure that when I'm older that I have the ability to take care of her like she took care of me Previous Next

< Back Sharon's Story Sharon shares about the influence that her hardworking, loving grandmother had on her and how this influence guided her to be the person she is today. 00:00 / 03:08 Previous Next

< Back Elaine's Story 00:00 / 06:18 I'm gonna be 80 this year. I always say God willing, because who knows? And when I was younger, I just assumed I would just keep getting older. So, when all those life experiences happen, I had to say to myself, what does that mean? You know? And my middle sister and I and my oldest sister used to talk about, well, my mother died young. I wonder who will be next. And then when Barbara died, it was like, okay. I guess I'm off the hook. And then, oh my goodness, I got older and older, and I made 47, and I made 49, and I made 51. And it dawned on me that I really didn't have a road map for assuming I would age because nobody in my family had, especially the women. And so, as I began to get a little bit older and not take it for granted, but also say, okay. I am alive, and I want to make the most of it. I looked around for what I call mentors or role models. And I have about 4 of them that I want to talk to about today, and I'll just jump off with the first one. I'm married at 21, and my husband was 31. And I was lucky enough to have a fantastic mother-in-law. Her name was Doris. And Doris was a very lively, fun, very caring human being, and great wonderful mother-in-law and grandmother. And one of the things that I learned from her as I watched her age is how to approach getting old. And several things I learned from her was, 1, she said you need to constantly make friends all the time and make new friends because people go away, people die, and you always sort of want to replenish. So, you know, doing this project is another way to replenish friends and people who are younger because, hopefully, they'll be around for a while. And also, after her husband, my father-in-law passed away, I watched what she did with her life. And what I observed was she really decided to live life and to sort of figure out how to be a widow and how to enjoy life. And so, she had almost 20 years of learning how to live independently and was an amazing role model. My next one is a woman named Mary Merriam, who is a woman I met through a quilting group. They were doing traditional old fashioned hand quilting. What I what I saw with her is, first of all, she was incredibly kind, and so that's a wonderful thing to see in people. And having read the book on loneliness, he talks about the impute importance of community. And joining her group, it was a group of about a dozen women, and it was met on a morning, Tuesday morning in the city in the town hall in Conway. And we just sat around and did hand quilting, which is very quiet, very peaceful. And, she was very encouraging, and we probably met for almost 10 years before the book broke up. But what I learned from Mary was, she took care of her husband. He had a stroke, and she was so loving and so kind and made a point of still getting to the quilt group. But she had to balance that new role that she had. And so, watching that experience was very moving. And then the next person within the group was the 99 year old woman, and her name was Dot. And Dot was another wonderful, wonderful example of how to age. And she was a skinny little thing, I think maybe a little bit taller than me, but very slight. And she was carrying this big queen-size quilt. And I went to the door to help her open the door, and I said, let me carry that for you. And her response was, don't baby me. So, I thought that was absolutely wonderful. And, again, that spirit, that feistiness that says, nobody's gonna just I'm not a shriveled up little old lady. She used to talk about what a blessed life she lived. And at some point, I talked to Mary about her, and it turned out her father died in his fifties. Her own husband had died roughly around the same age, and she still had the courage to say, I'm blessed. And then the last person, her name is Ruth. And Ruth lived to 94, just recently passed away. And I knew her through the Mount Holyoke community. But the thing that Ruth taught me was as she aged, she had a lot of problems, health problems, and would be in and out of the hospital. And last year, when she came home, they had her on oxygen, and she had this long tube that went on forever. And when I visited her, she was so feisty. She's like, wow. I'm not gonna carry this damn thing around forever. And she said, I am gonna get rid of this and get off of oxygen and be done with this. And she actually did. And I think, you know, some people might have just resigned themselves, sat in a chair, and say, oh, poor me, and just kind of let fade out. There was nothing that was gonna fade out on her. I mean, at 94, she did eventually die, but spirit, her fight, her willingness to say, alright. That's what's happening today, but that's not gonna necessarily be what's happening tomorrow. So, I think that I feel so fortunate to have learned from all of these four examples that I'm giving you, and there's plenty more I could do on. But how to approach life, not make certain assumptions, not stereotype yourself into certain behavior Previous Next

< Back McKenna's Story McKenna describes her love of gymnastics in this story. The lessons it taught her and the people she met along the way are invaluable to her, and she will carry these lessons with her throughout the rest of her life. 00:00 / 03:21 McKenna: The reason that my mother put myself and my two younger siblings in gymnastics, um, was because my younger brother, who is three years younger than me, he always used to stand on his head in his car seat, um, like, as my mom would buckle everybody in. My siblings are twins, so getting everybody in the car was an ordeal because she didn't have enough hands to possibly buckle everyone in at once. And my brother would always slip on to his head in his booster seat and hold himself up there, and kind of swing around. And there were a couple close calls of him, you know, making some choices that maybe weren’t the safest for him. My mom put us into gymnastics, because she thought, you know, that this would be a safe place for them to learn how to be monkeys and not get hurt. Uh, and maybe not to put themselves in a headstand in the car seat. My brother, after - he did gymnastics only for a few years with us in the very beginning, and he quickly decided that that wasn't for him. And my mom for the most part was our chauffeur, here, there, and everywhere for gymnastics, um, although they both always made a point - sometimes, my sister and I had different meets, and we’d be in different places, so they would have to separate out for those meets. I think that, as I got older, a lot of my friends stopped doing it competitively, so I was - at one point I was like the oldest girl in the gym, other than one other girl who is a year younger than me by, like, a landslide. And, so. At that point in time - I don't know. I felt a little disconnected from my peers in that moment, but. Gymnastics is very physically demanding and, I mean, I dislocated my hip when I was thirteen and I tore some tendons in my ankle at 17. And there were days that I - there were 100% days where I was like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I here? I could be with my friends, I could be doing this,” whatever that could be might have been. “Why am I here?” and I think the life lesson from pushing through those days, and looking back on it now, the character I have for that, and the grit that I learned to say, “Okay, I made this commitment.” Some of my very greatest life lessons-and I constantly reflect back on things I learned from doing gymnastics-as like, you know, okay, back up and take a breather and we approach the situation as like, life skills as opposed to just physical sports skills. I learned a lot from gymnastics in the physical sense but most in the, like emotional and mental well-being and awareness sense. That I, I think I was ready to part ways. I felt like I had, I had learned what I could as a person. And sure, I could have kept going and learned new skills, and sure, I could have, if I really wanted to, have gone further with it but I just, I came to a point that I knew my body was not gonna be able to keep going. But, gymnastics was the first place that had an understanding that family could be more than just blood related. You come to college and you kind of have your home away from home or your home in a person more so than a place kind of thing and I learned that from gymnastics. Previous Next

< Back Juli's Story Juli speaks with Jacqueline about her time at summer camp as a kid. At this camp, Juli met someone who didn’t fit in. But Juli learned how a little kindness could go a long way. Scroll to listen 00:00 / 02:06 Yeah I think I dont know how old I was maybe 10 years old and it was ya know mostly I went to summer camp ya know girl scout camps but it was a camp at the end of camp um they always had this big camp fire at the end of the week at camp and everyone would come and they gave an award it was like a good citizen award to the person who best exemplified the values of ya know camping and girl scouting and I got the award It shocked me cause I didnt feel like I distinguished myself in anyway at that point i didnt really excel as a student when was young it wasnt until i got older but um and I relaized and I had to think about it for a few minutes why did they give me this and i think it was because there was a girl who was assigned to my tent that year and I always went by myself I didnt know other campers and it wa a tent with 4 cots one of th egirsl was um she was clearly from a poor family probably there on a grant and um she was very awkward very awkward physically and socially and ya know just had a hard time fitting in ya know and that was clear to me and the other 2 girls in our tent wanted absolutely nothing to do with her and so I always made sure ya know when we go out for walks in the woods wed have to have a buddy and i would ask her to be my buddy and I made sure she wasnt sitting alone um at meal times um ya know I just tried to be kind with her even though i didnt really connect with her cause she wasn't easy to engage with but I just tried to be kind and I think thats why I got the award and it was an important lesson to me ya know the value of kindness Previous Next

< Back Liam's Story Liam talks about a scene in the movie Tampopo and discusses the differences in how people consume media and how media can be interpreted differently depending on the viewer. 00:00 / 03:22 0:00 I am going to talk about a specific scene in a specific movie that is now over 30 years old. But that means a lot to me. The movie is called Tampopo. The director is juzo Itami. The scene I want to talk about is about a family. We are introduced to the first member of the story, as we see a man running past the end of one of the stories that we've just seen. And we see him run down the street, we see him run along the train track, he runs up his stairs, and he gets to what we assume to be the door of his house bulldozes in and we see in his house, there are three children, a man, we suppose is a doctor and a woman who we suppose is a nurse. Lastly, there is also a woman lying on a makeshift bed or roll on the ground, he runs in and by his tone, we can tell that the woman is sick, and that she perhaps has been for a long time he runs over to her and he says, stay with me, you can't die. And he says do something, sing do anything. And he hits the floor and he says don't make dinner. And the woman slowly rises and gets up and walks over to the kitchen. Kind of absent mindedly grabbing a knife and some spring onions. And she cuts them up, puts them in a pan puts other things and we see the family viewing this and we see the children because they know what to do have already gotten their bowls and have moved to the table we see the older sister setting things out for her youngest sibling, the mother or then comes back with this steaming bowl of food places on a table. And we see all of the hands come in and start serving themselves. However we see the mother first serve the youngest child. After that, they all start eating and the husband looks up and says it's really good. It's delicious. And we see her smile. She slowly falls over. And the doctor pronounces her dead. The oldest daughter screams and comforts her youngest sibling, the father yells essentially Eat it while it's hot. This is the last meal that your mother made for you. 2:22 And we see the middle child, the boy kind of watching his father and doing the same thing. And then the scene cuts out. And it's over. And it's three minutes. I think a lot of the scenes kind of just pass by and spectacle. And so because of that the more intimate and caring scenes really stick out because you're kind of forced to sit with it and sit with what you've just watched. It's It's interesting how we consume media, and how we all come at it from our own different little lens. But for me, I think the scene that I described sticks out a lot because, you know, I think we're all able to see different parts of us in film. And it's interesting, because I think I relate pretty heavily to the characters in this scene specifically, my mom is still alive. You know, she's had different illnesses and different things that have kind of made this film stick out. This is one of the only scenes in a film that's ever I think really made me emotional. Previous Next

< Back Emily W's Story Emily W talks to Emily L about how the feminist movement has shaped her growing up and how the culture of women's liberation influenced her ideologies and life. 00:00 / 04:39 The feminist movement which was then mostly called Women's liberation movement was a major civil rights movement when I was growing up in the sixties and seventies. In high school I started paying attention to national leaders like Gloria Steinem in particular, who had started Miss Magazine which was kind of the first thing that was called a women's magazine that wasn't about housekeeping and cooking and among many other things she said that women needed to recognize and fight for the right for recognition and equality, the idea that women were equal. It seems like such common sense, but it wasn't people didn't always act as if that was common sense. In a lot of ways I felt that my whole life, but especially when I went to college I went to a women's college, Wilson college in Pennsylvania and I learned academically some of the things that I was picking up from the culture from women's liberation, things about, you know women have always been pioneers, but our history has been often hidden either accidentally or on purpose. Certain women have always defied the norms and excelled but they have not always been celebrated. Just that there were a lot of hidden stories of women, both individual and national. So feminism made me question a lot of the norms that I've grown up with. I certainly was never told as a kid that I wasn't equal to a man. I was always told well you can do whatever you want to do. But the culture saw until I grew up with these sort of Unthinking things around the T. V. Ads magazines. And that in my hometown was the college that my mom went to which was this women's college. It turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done in my life. When I got there I realized-- I mean it's sort of like my intellectual life took off. There were certainly efforts made by most of the professors to bring women's history or whatever into the curriculum. So in some way I definitely got more academic knowledge than I might have been at another school. But mainly it was just being around all women and when women have all the opportunities women take all the roles. So it was nobody saying you can do this. It was just if you wanted to do it you did it. And so it wasn't political at all. It was just like learning by doing oh you can do anything, you really can do anything. The baseline assumptions have changed considerably and it's much more than the norm for women to have a choice of how they lived their lives. That's kind of the bedrock change. So I think the biggest change probably is that the assumption of inferiority since it and it wasn't all that women couldn't do as good a job at things but there was always the assumption that you probably didn't even want to give women a chance in the workplace or anything serious because they would get married and or have kids and then leave, and so therefore you really needed to give men the opportunities that we're serious. And I don't think that happens as much. There's still some of it, but I don't think nearly as much overall about feminism, it's certainly not a big hot topic today and the way that it was when I was growing up, but I think although there's so much more to be done, it's okay that it's not a hot topic because it doesn't need to be in quite the same way that second wave feminism, which is the era that I grew up, made some progress and therefore feminism for a lot of people could be put on the back burner because men and women and people of other genders just sort of take it far more likely to take it for granted that, of course everybody has self determination. So I don't personally take any credit for that, but I think my generation as a whole, and the generation just before me, um, can take some some credit for kicking up a lot of fuss and making things happen. Previous Next

Owen talks about his decision to go to college as a way to avoid the Vietnam War. He talks about how this experience exposed him to a whole new demographic of people and allowed him to see people for who they were as opposed to the stereotypes they had been socialized to believe. Education served as a bridge across cultures, creating the ability to connect with people of all backgrounds. Owen's Story Owen talks about his decision to go to college as a way to avoid the Vietnam War. He talks about how this experience exposed him to a whole new demographic of people and allowed him to see people for who they were as opposed to the stereotypes they had been socialized to believe. Education served as a bridge across cultures, creating the ability to connect with people of all backgrounds. Owen's Story 00:00 / 03:11 When I was 19, approximately, there was something going on called the Vietnam war, and you probably studied it in ancient history or something like that. But for those of us who didn’t really want get out there and get shot at, we had to find eats to not do that. And we also didn’t really believe that war was necessary. So I was part of a group of people, there are many, many of us, who said, no, this is not a good idea. And the only way I could stay out was to go to college. And so I went to college. And another thing that’s big in my life is when I went into college I was meeting different people from different parts of the world and more so different parts of the country. But I did meet a few people from outside the US. And some people have big influences on you. Some people have small influences on you, and some people you just don’t understand. And part of the non-understanding is you have to learn to accept people as they are. I would say the majority of kids that I was in classes with were white, from middle-class suburban cities around middle-class suburbs, from large cities around the country. I went to school in St. Louis, and I came from a suburb of Washington DC. but there were so many people from so many other places that were similar to me. And then I got to meet people who were different than me. I remember one young woman came from Hawaii, and she was native Hawaiian, and that was cool. I mean, I’d never met anybody from Hawaii before. And one day it snowed and she ran outside, and she just went absolutely beserk running between the snowflakes because she had read about it, she’d seen it in movies, but she had never experienced snow before. And i’m going, okay, this is cool. You know, I’m just trying to understand somebody’s frame of mind, especially when you grow up with snow. You know it’s like, what’s just snow? It’s like, no, this was like a life-altering event for her. And I said, okay, that’s cool. You know, you don’t, it’s to be able to do that and not to judge somebody based on things like that. And I grew up in a society where a lot of people were not accepted as they were. A lot of minorities were looked down upon and legally discriminated against. And, you know, that sort of has gone away, but not entirely. There was no such thing as people who were openly gay. That just didn’t happen during that period of time. People did not date interracially. You never saw, you know, a white woman with a black guy. I mean it just didn’t happen. So when you start meeting people that are different and meeting people a little outside of your realm of experience, you learn about them and you learn to accept them. And that was a huge thing for me, to transition from living with stereotypes, which were reinforced by things like tv shows, to getting to know people and understanding who the people were. And you know, understanding a person as a person, not just put into a category, a stereotype. Part of going to school was that piece of education. Previous Next

< Back Jesse's Story, 2022 Jesse talks with Lauren about being wrongfully accused and sent to prison. He shares the lessons he learned during that difficult time. 00:00 / 04:41 “The toughest thing I went through was, when I was in college, I had a little run in with the law over a marijuana issue. When the whole thing started I was 18 years old. I was in college out in Western Pennsylvania. That particular town was under very, very right winged conservative area. They were down on drugs. I was accused of selling $15 worth of marijuana. And went to trial. It really should never even gone to trial. I mean they had no real evidence. There were four people in the room at the time it was supposed to have happened and three of them said it didn't happen, and one of them said it did. And they decided to believe that one person. I was the only one. I was pretty sure it was because I was Jewish and there a very strong anti-Semitic taint to the whole thing. So I was convicted. The judge said, as far as he’s concerned, selling drugs is as bad as murder. So he gave me the maximum sentence, even though it was my first offense. He gave me 3 years in prison. I didn’t take it seriously, I really didn’t think I was gonna go to prison. It just seemed so outrageous. My lawyer was taking an appeal then I got a call one day from my father and he said, the appeal fell through and you have to go to prison. So, I freaked out, I was 21 years old at the time. Really didn’t know what to expect. My first week there was very very scary. It was overcrowded, so they didn’t have room for me in the part of the prison where they first introduce people. So I was put in solitary confinement for a week, which was really not a lot of fun. I thought my life was over at that point. Prison is like hell. It’s like everybody’s there, it's full of anger and aggression, but I found some friends there, actually. There were several people there, that were there for drug related offenses, you know, marijuana. And we weren’t criminals, you know, we were just kids who got caught up in a system. Because I had friends, I was able to make it through. Could’ve gotten out in one year, but it didn't seem like that was gonna happen. They wanted me to repent and say that what I had done was wrong. I was adamant that I thought the drug laws were wrong. I didn't really repent and they took that as a mark against me. So I didn’t know how long I’d be in there. It was a hard thing. One of the things that got me through was, I had a girlfriend before I ended up there. She wrote me almost everyday. She would write me a letter like almost everyday, at least 5 or 6 times a week. And that really helped me make it through, getting those letters everyday, really lifted my spirits. It turned out that my father was really not very good. I went to prison because of him. He told me he had taken the appeals, but didn’t. He told the lawyer not to take the appeals. And that’s why I ended up going to prison, my own father. And I didn't find that out until later. My mother hired a lawyer from the national organization for the reform of marijuan laws and he told me, he says, “they never took the appeals, you had grounds for appeals but they never took it.” He applied for what's called, commutation, which is reeducation of sentence. My mother went to court and testified for me. One day I was about 8 months into my sentence and they called me up and said, “do you have a job for when you get out of prison?” I said, “what are you talking about? I’m not getting out for another 2 and half years.”And they said, “No, right here it says you’re getting out next month.” I said, “what?!” And sure enough the commutation had gone through and nobody had told me. I was released from prison after about 7 or 8 months. So I was really, really, happy about that. I was so excited. That day I got out I was so happy. I felt so good. It was like, okay, I made it through that. If I can make it through that, I can make it through anything. So I felt really confident, really good, and really proud of myself that I had made it through and I hadn’t turned bitter, and I hadn’t gotten worse. You know, like, I got out and went right back to school, got my degree and went on to graduate school. In some ways, prison helped me, I mean I would not recommend it to anybody, it wasn’t worth it, but it did help me. It did help me focus my life. I guess the main lesson I learned was that no matter how bad it gets, there is a way forward and there's a way out. Nothing bad lasts forever. I still feel that freedom I felt on the day I got let out, the strength I felt. I can still tap into that today. As bad as things get, they eventually end. Bad things don’t last forever and there’s a way through. That’s what I learned.” Previous Next

< Back Robert's Story, 2022 Robert talks to Honor about his experiences living in a commune and how it saved him from serving in the Vietnam war. He explains how his faith and trust in a higher power guided him to conquer this fear, and continues to support him to this day. 00:00 / 04:00 Previous Next

Kelly's Story Kelly talks with Jesse about her evolving family dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scroll to Listen Kelly's Story 00:00 / 04:10 When COVID first started, it was my sophomore year of college. I was living on campus at UMass. I remember specifically when I found out that it was going to be like a real issue. It was when Tom Hanks got COVID. It was a joke in my family that that was the first time I actually got a little nervous. I was supposed to go on the UMass Habitat for Humanity trip to Georgia, but they obviously ended up having to cancel it. I have two older brothers Kevin and Timmy. My brother Kevin right now is 27. And my brother Timmy, or Tim, is 25. And I'm 21. My brother wasn't living with us initially, he was living on his own, but obviously COVID isolated a lot of people. He didn't want to be alone like that, especially since we didn't know how long it was going to be. So, he actually moved back home with us. It was the first time in quite a few years that I had a full house. It was weird at first, I think, obviously, I had to do online school. And my mom was working from home. My dad's an electrician, so he wasn't even working. My dad's a funny guy. He loves attention. And he hates being bored. So he was bothering my brothers who were working remotely too. So it was just a cluster of us on our laptops for a little bit. But I think it was really great overall, looking back at it, especially at that time, it was nice to kind of get my family all back together for a few months. I feel like not a lot of people have that opportunity. So it was kind of nice. I learned a lot about my own study habits, work ethic, and stuff like that. In terms of online classes, I feel like it was a hit or miss. Some professors were really good at keeping us engaged. We had more than a year online, because we left the second semester two years ago. So it's like I forgot what it's like to actually be in school. Learning in general, it just isn't what it used to be. It's less collaborative. I feel like the pandemic helped me in some sort of way, it had as many benefits as it did the opposite. And I don't think I would change it. I think I was glad to have the opportunity to live with my family like that for a while. I remember having Thanksgiving with my family, which is usually a very big holiday. Like we have people flying into town. It's like a very big thing. And for the first year ever, we had a just Thanksgiving with my family. Just my immediate family, which we have never done before. The turkey. I don't know if it caught on fire for a second. It was a Thanksgiving disaster. I think we ended up microwaving some pizza. It was fun. We had a lot of fun, especially since everyone's getting older. It was really nice to live in my family like that for a little bit, especially now that my brother moved back out. And it's nice. I feel like I wouldn't have had the opportunity to get as close to them as I did. There was one day when it was very early in the pandemic. I live kind of close to Boston. I'm up in Wakefield. They put in the stay at home order. And my dad wasn't working and he and I ended up driving around the coast, around Gloucester, just for the day just to kill time and stuff like that. And when we were driving, he was like “I really want a haircut. I haven't had the opportunity to get my haircut in so long.” So I told him, I was like, “I'll cut your hair that would be great.” And we got back and I asked him, because my dad's getting older and he is losing some hair, I was like “I'm wondering what you would look like if you were bald.” We weren't seeing anyone, so he shaved his head fully. I started shaving, at first we did a buzzer, and then I got shaving cream and we made him completely bald. That was probably one of the highlights of COVID. He looked scary. And he looked like Mr. Clean. It was good though. I thought it was funny. I think that was a good bonding experience between my family.