_{A picture is worth a thousand words. A New York City resident by the name of Brandon Stanton has embraced this philosophy and created a blog called Humans of New York (often abbreviated as HONY). The blog features his photographs of random people he meets on the streets of New York and includes their responses to questions about their life, philosophies, or simply what they’re doing at the time. His collection of photography has gained thousands of followers, and inspired many spinoff projects that aspire to create the same unique and moving portrait of the human condition. One of these spinoffs is on our very own Hamline St. Paul campus under the name of Humans of Hamline University (HOHU).}

_{I talked to the creators of HOHU: Barbara Nickel (second year), Afua Paintsil (third year), and Mariya Khan (third year) about why they started HOHU, their experiences while doing the project, and what they’ve learned from it.}

_{What initially drew you to starting this project?}

_{Barbara: You’ve probably seen the blog HONY—well, I absolutely love that blog, as many people do, and I noticed that a lot of other colleges had been starting [their own blogs]. I really wanted to do something like that but I couldn’t do it all by myself, and I was hoping someone would ask me if I’d be willing to do it. Then I met with [Afua and Mariya] and we were all enthusiastic about it.}

_{Mariya: The idea first came up on Facebook when several students started discussing on the confession page how neat it would be to have Humans of New York style project at Hamline. A few people indicated they were really interested, and Afua got in touch with us and it became a thing!}

_{Afua: When I discovered the Humans of New York page I was instantly drawn to it… I literally spent two and a half hours just viewing his images and reading the captions and comments. You always have to read the comment section, the comments are the best part! So after a week or two I knew this is something that would benefit the Hamline community, it was so “us” and I talked casually about it with close friends, but I knew it couldn’t be done alone. Then around the same time on the Hamline Confessions page there were a couple of confessions each week about how there needs to be a Humans of Hamline page. I finally commented on one and so did Mariya and Barbara. Barbara was the one who messaged us and the rest is history (just kidding, we’re not even a year old).}

_{How do you go about choosing subjects for HOHU?}

_{Barbara: It’s hard sometimes to get myself to muster up the courage just to walk up to a complete stranger. At first I would do it with people that I sort of recognized or knew who would be in my classes and I would say “hi, I don’t know if you know me, I’m Barbara, we have blah blah class together.” A lot of the time it’s hard on a college campus because I don’t want to bother people if they’re studying, and I don’t want to because a lot of people are studying. So, a lot of the time I look for someone who is alone, sometimes pairs. I do a bit on weekends, too, which is kind of hard because a lot of people are gone on weekends at Hamline. Really, it’s just anybody. Anyone. I try and get a big range of people and we have a goal of getting different age ranges. I want to try and stop people who work here, that aren’t professors, just anybody.}

_{Mariya: It’s mostly random, but at a small school like Hamline you always are running into people you know, such as friends, teachers, and administration folks. Sometimes we might approach someone who we’re familiar with because it’s comfortable or because we think they’d be a good feature for the page. Other times someone just really catches our eye or we try to approach someone we don’t know at all. It’s all to display and represent the Hamline community as best we can.}

_{Afua: At first we tried to do it the way Brandon went about it, which is literally just carrying around your camera and approaching people. We watched one of his addresses with [another college] and he talked about what he’s learned in approaching strangers. This covered everything from how he asks questions, body language, tone, inflection, the kind of energy you give off… this was really helpful. However, we soon learned that that’s actually really hard to do. Not only did I feel vulnerable and awkward, but being rejected is never easy. Oh, and not to forget that more people than I could’ve imagined didn’t know what Humans of New York was, and as a result couldn’t really grasp the concept of what we were doing and why. So that took time, and still takes time, just being patient and explaining. As a result, some of these factors, the most obvious being that the girls and I are HOHU, means that school often gets in the way. So we started trying to create more of an archive of photos and taking time to schedule interviews with our subjects on one day and a photo on another, or vice versa. We’ve also taken pragmatic approaches like making sure our page is more representative of the Hamline population. On more than one occasion Barbara and I have talked about how we lack racial diversity or how we tend to approach more women than men, etc. So after conversations like that we make more of an effort and act accordingly.}

_{Have you learned anything from doing this project?}

_{Barbara: Something that we did that you might have seen on our page was we featured ourselves, which was really weird. It was really weird to be on that side [of the process] and being asked all of these intrusive questions. It was easier because I know Afua, and she asked me the questions. It was interesting because I got more of a sense of what it feels like to have someone walk up to you. We tried our best to not prepare for questions and throw out questions so that we wouldn’t have a great answer because that’s how [our subjects] are; you don’t think about those kind of questions all day.}

_{Mariya: I’ve learned a lot about the breadth and depth of the Hamline community. It’s been great to see both how varied our community can be, and how each person always has some interesting insight or story inside them.}

_{Afua: Definitely, I’ve learned that we can all identify with each other’s struggles and that being vulnerable is one of the most difficult things in life. We’ll all struggle but most, if not all of us will struggle to be vulnerable with others and honest with ourselves because it literally makes you feel naked. I’ve also learned that the best things in life are simple, whether it be simple things we take for granted, simple answers from our subjects that have so much weight and meaning, or the simplicity of our photos.}

_{What are your hopes for the future of the project?}

_{Barbara: My hopes are just that people enjoy the page—that when new people come to Hamline, something that their NSMs say is “oh you should check out this page” and then people go there and they have a sense of community, a sense that our school is unique and a good place to be because we have good people here.}

_{Mariya: Personally, I hope to bring more people on board and gain more submissions from around campus. There are a lot of little pockets of people that we may never be in touch with, and it would be great if everyone on campus knew or could relate to who we feature or were exposed to other groups who they’d never otherwise know about. I think that’s the coolest thing our page does!}

_{Afua: For underclassmen to get involved so that it doesn’t just quit once we all graduate. Also to feature more Hamline faculty and staff because some of them are really the best part of our school community.}

_{If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?}

_{Barbara: Always be who you are, and don’t change that depending on who you’re with. I know people who say one thing and then when they’re around another person, it’s completely different. I look at them and I’m like, “what are you saying? That’s not who you are.” I know it’s harder, especially with people that you don’t know, because you don’t want to say “no that’s not right,” but I think that if it’s something that is really morally important to you that you should just stick to that.}

_{Mariya: Be brave when it comes to knowing the people around you! This project has made me realize how tough that can be, but at the same time I’ve been coming to realize how short and valuable life is, and how quickly opportunities fly us by. Don’t miss what’s right in front of you.} 

_{Afua:  Well one of my favorite sayings, I actually have it engraved in a ring, is “carpe diem” (seize the day). At the beginning of this new year I read a quote that says “carpe diem” in different terms; it’s by Eleanor Roosevelt: “do one thing every day that scares you.” Upon reading it, I made a conscious decision to resolve to do that in this new year. Every day since then I have done more than one thing a day that scares me—nothing life threatening or dangerous—but it’s crazy how much I’ve grown and changed for the better in eighteen days. It hasn’t left me broken or weak but has made me accept vulnerability, and as a result I’ve become stronger. I’d recommend that everyone do one thing every day that scares them.}

_{See the stories they’ve gathered so far at www.facebook.com/HumansOfHU}