By Annie Hart

This past Friday, Nov. 29, the First Year Seminar (FYS) class “Humans of New York: Empathy and Connectedness on a Global Scale” shared their final projects in the Health and Life Sciences building in the rotunda.

This project is the culmination of what students learned in the classroom, about empathy and approaching others with sincerity. The students studied the popular blog, Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, and were tasked to find someone on campus who would give them their story.

After pep talks and months of Humans of New York posts and Brandon Stanton videos, the students went out on their own to find someone as different from them as possible.

The questions  students were tasked to ask was, “What is your biggest struggle right now?” and “What are you inspired by?”. In response to this students received answers about procrastination, being raised in the struggle, their parents, agoraphobia, depression, sexuality, immigration, religion, and more.

When asked about the project and its effect on him,Joseph Cooper, freshman Sports Management major said, “Developing these photos have created new freindships and memories amongst me and my fellow classmates with people on campus. During the event it honestly felt like we were all one big family.”

This project is very close to my own heart, as I am the First Year Seminar mentor for the class. The students have grown immensely from the first week of class to now. The ability for the students to share their own struggles and connect with others were goals for this class, and they blew that goal out of the water.