Humans of Emma Willard School

Since we are no longer on campus, I have made some changes to my project. I will now be collecting photos and videos from students with a quote from them about what they have been doing during their time at home. So far, I have made two new posts on the Instagram and have gotten great feedback! I am a little concerned about the number of submissions I’m going to receive because as of right now, I have only gotten two. The Morning Reports team is going to be mentioning the changes to my project and telling people to look at the updates I have posted (and will post again on Thursday) on the account, so I am hoping that more people will reach out to me. I really want to have a lot of content to share with the community to make everyone still feel connected with each other.

I ordered large prints of 8 photos from some of my favorite interviews from the past two years and they have since been delivered. Unfortunately, I will not be able to hang up the pictures with quotes from the interviews as I had originally hoped, but I will be giving the pictures to the school anyway. I am hoping that next fall there will be somewhere during the beginning of the year where they can be put up for people to see them.

I have begun planning the details of my photo installation with Ms. Slaughter and Ms. Valites. I am going to hang up 8 or 9 pictures and put quotes from the interviews next to them. I am going to print them through Shutterfly because it is less expensive than printing them at school, and once I order them and they arrive, I can begin framing them. We already have frames I am going to use at school, and I am going to hang them toward the end of the Dietel Gallery in the library. It depends on when the photos arrive, but I am planning on having them hung up about a week before spring break, and they will be staying up for about two weeks once we get back.

“I’ve done a lot of self reflecting and questioning myself and trying to figure out what identities fit me and which ones I feel comfortable in. Because of that, I feel like I do feel really confident in those and feel very stable in the identities that I have developed over time.

I’m Jewish and I think that a lot of learning about Judaism for me has been trying to struggle with the fact that traditional Judaism doesn’t support the LGBTQ community. I’m a reform Jew and Reform Judaism does support the queer community, but there’s still scripture and text and a large amount of history as part of my Jewish identity that conflicts with my queer identity. I think that has led me to look a lot into my Jewish self and my queer self to find places where those two intersect in a natural and loving way.” -Rose ‘20

When thinking about a final product for my project, I have decided that creating a book is not the best thing to do because it would take a lot of time to design, and I do not think that I have enough interviews to make one. Instead, I am thinking about doing an installation of my photos and quotes from some of my favorite interviews in the hallway of the library. I would ideally like to have it up before spring break so I could get feedback from members of the community before my presentation in May.

This week I did another group interview with members of the Pride club. This was the second group interview I have done and I really like how it went. I asked the two heads of the club to recommend a couple of other members that stand out to them as members that are really active and then I reached out to them and asked if they wanted to join us in the interview. This one was a little quiet at times because it was a heavier topic. In addition, two of the people in the Interview were people that I had never spoken to before we began, so in the beginning, they seemed a littler nervous about opening up to me. As the group kept talking they seemed to get more comfortable and we were able to have a really great conversation.

During the heath fair that the Wellies hosted, I was able to talk to five of them about their experience being Wellness Advocates. Instead of speaking to them individually, I approached the group of them and recorded the conversation we had together. I started by asking them why they wanted to be Wellies and from there, they told me about their motivation and about things they have done or things they want to do while they hold this title. I really liked this style of interview because it felt less like an interview and more like a conversation. They would build on what other people say and add on their own perspective of things that were brought up and it felt very natural. I did not feel like I was controlling the conversation at all.

I have done a couple more interviews and I have posted one of them. I currently have a list of people that I want to interview, and I have spoken to a few of them about finding a time to do that, but for most people, I am struggling to find a time to talk to them. I have not completed my goal for the semester, but I am planning on dedicating more time to my project during second semester when I will have more time.

A challenge that I have faced so far this year is finding a way to let the new students and faculty members know about my Instagram page. I want the whole community to be aware of it so that they can see my posts and have the opportunity to learn something about someone else they might not know too well. I want to use this page as a way to bring the community closer together, but it is hard to do so when not everybody knows that it exists. I think that it would also be more helpful if when I approach someone to talk to them, they knew what my page was and what I was trying to do that way I would not have to try and explain it all. I also feel like it would make the people I interview more comfortable if they knew what my page was, but I am just struggling to find an efficient way to let people know about it.

So far this year, I have only done a couple of interviews and I have not been able to reach my goal of completing six by the end of this month. This year, because I want to focus on people who are active members of the school community and talk to them while they are doing something, It has been more difficult to find people to interview. Because of conflicting schedules and timing of some school events that have already occurred, I have not been able to make too much progress. Although I have not been able to do as much as I would have liked with this goal in mind, I think that it is important that I keep trying to conduct interviews this way because they will result in more genuine responses from the people I talk to.