TMJH Park City Post: Students at Sundance: Our Perspective by Murphy and Mackenna

Over the past week or so, Sundance has taken over the quiet ski town of Park City, Utah. The town has been flooded with hundreds of tourists, companies trying to sell their products, and tons of celebrities.

The three of us found ourselves standing along with the crowd. We knew that Nick Jonas had to be around, based on our prior research and Instagram stalking, but although finding Nick was our ultimate goal, it didn’t take long before multiple other stars walked through the crowd. Some were extremely interactive, like Josh Groban, but others were walking pretty quickly to get through all of the screaming fans, like John Krasinski and Don Cheadle. A sense of anxiety submerged the crowd, including us, even though we had no idea who would walk out next. As time went by, we made our way to the front of the crowd, and people came and left; however, the crowd slowly continued to grow as rumors were spread. At one point, we heard screaming behind us. We turned our heads and saw a big crowd of people following a man dressed in all black. We ran from the front of the crowd in front of variety lounge and chased after John Legend, nearly getting hit by a car in the process!

Once we got all of our pictures of the famous singer, we rushed back to the variety building to wait for Nick. We had never experienced the typical “star-struck” feeling until, suddenly, there was more screaming as Nick Jonas came out from the lounge. Things got crazy - everyone was shoving each other out of the way to get the perfect shot, photographers were running into people with their massive cameras, and other people were pulling our clothes and even our hair to get through. We got videos and pictures, but we didn’t stop there - we sprinted across the streets, following the huge herd and the huge, mean-looking bodyguards. Fortunately, we were aggressive enough to get to the front of the pack and get the best selfie with Nick, even if he was only looking at the ground. It was the perfect ending to an extravagant day.