My Self-Quarantine on Campus
COM Student’s Vlog Captures What It’s Like to Live on a Mostly Empty Campus
COM Student’s Vlog Captures What It’s Like to Live on a Mostly Empty Campus
In March, when Boston University announced it was moving classes to remote teaching and learning and advised students to stay home when spring break ended, many international students were faced with a difficult decision: should they return home or petition to remain on campus? Approximately 1,200 students successfully petitioned to remain in BU housing (the number here now is 447). What is it like to be living in the midst of a largely deserted campus? To be studying away from your family and friends?
Jiaxin Tong (COM’22), a film major from Shanghai, China, was one of the students who decided to stay. In addition to the concerns of both him and his parents about the possibility of exposure to COVID-19 on the long plane ride home, Tong didn’t want to interrupt his schoolwork.
“If I had decided to leave Boston and go back home, I would have had two days’ absence from courses because of the flight, and I would have been under quarantine for 14 days in a hotel in China,” he says. “Wi-Fi might not have been guaranteed to work while in the hotel, too.”
Over the past three weeks, Tong recorded video vignettes of his life in self-quarantine, on short walks around campus and from his apartment on Bay State Road: taking film and Japanese classes remotely, eating meals purchased at Super 88 Market or picked up at Warren Towers, communicating daily with his family via WeChat. He talks about the safety precautions he takes before leaving his room to shop or take a walk. The highlight of his daily routine has been leaving his room cautiously each night, wearing gloves and a mask, to an empty campus to take out his trash.
“I finally get a reason not to feel guilty going out of my dorm,” he says. “It’s a treat for me to breathe in some fresh air, to see some people walking on the street, and to not feel self-isolated.”
Tong has been packing up to fly home to Shanghai for the summer as soon as he can get a flight (several scheduled flights have been canceled). He plans to return to BU in the fall and is already anticipating a return to life as he once knew it.
“I am looking forward to seeing all my friends and classmates back on campus, to having lunch with them,” he says. “I’m also looking forward to shooting films with the proper equipment and being able to have face-to-face meetings for group projects.”
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