Observer Department: Slider

COVID curveball: The pros and cons of learning online

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Life changed abruptly for students and faculty members when the Covid-19 pandemic hit last March.   With cases rising around the country, this prompted the precautionary decision for all schools, from kindergarten to college, to go virtual. By mid-March, most school campuses were closed and had transitioned to online classes…

COVID-19 has torn apart the fabric of trade schools, where online learning fails as a substitute

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The teachers and students at trade and technical high schools have been suffering over the past year due to COVID-19 and the implementation of online learning.   Trade schools like Whittier Technical High School and Essex Agricultural High School have been at the tail end of the changes brought on…

Survey shows students coping with a year of isolation, loneliness

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The pandemic has caused a mass amount of change in a small amount of time. Some people may refer to the pandemic as unprecedented. The group that the pandemic has had the largest effect on is students. Kids went from seeing their teacher and friends everyday face to face to…

My top two places in Lawrence that offer birria tacos

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If this picture made your mouth water then you are one out of the millions who have been affected by the birria taco craze.This new birria taco trend has recently taken the world by storm but Ironically it has been around since the early 2000s. Originating from Tijuana Mexico these…

Soccer coach aims to build connections with student athletes

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Sports at NECC has typically always been a foundation in many college kids search for freedom and stress-relieving situations. When students are overloaded with work, which is what comes with the struggles of college,there’s always another direction students look towards to cool some minds down. Despite sports being one of…

Burrill wins national pitcher of the week

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Levi Burrill, an Amesbury native, took the mound in game two of the Knights doubleheader against nationally ranked Northampton Community College on March 22. Burrill is one of the captains for the baseball team and is headed to play baseball at Franklin Pierce next year. He has been around Coach…

Beauty in the mundane: Find inspiration, challenge yourself and see things differently

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A big thing right now is finding strong enough inspiration during these trying times that will give you a desire to create. A lot of creatives have found new ways of finding inspiration, and it’s been a surprise to realize that sometimes inspiration comes from the things that we might…

COVID-19 one year later: An oral history

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In March 2020 the world stood still when a pandemic ended everyday life. It started as a virus with its origins unknown that started in the city of Wuhan in the heart of the People’s Republic of China. After that it went global with the first cases popping out of…

Trying not to burst: Relationships inside the bubble

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Sometimes ‘okay’ is the best we got. And for surviving 2020, ‘okay’ is pretty good. As we come upon the one-year mark of quarantine, Americans couldn’t be more eager to head out and get back our personal space -- especially with the increasing rollout of vaccinations. For better and worse,…

How local artists are keeping in touch with creativity during COVID-19

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When it comes to creativity and artistic expression, human interactions and experiences can sometimes be one’s main source of inspiration. The COVID-19 pandemic has made our precious and ‘normal’ lives seem like a distant memory. Every group of people—from teens to retirees, infants to the elderly—have been impacted by this…