U of S Humans #USGRAD17

Lauren Conniff is a rising senior who is also the proud creator of @uofshumans, an Instagram account that peers into the lives of the members of our Royal community. She wants to use this account to tell the stories of people that others might not hear or read. I had the opportunity to sit with her and talk about her work!

Q: Do you want to briefly describe what Humans of The University of Scranton is?

A: It’s basically my spin on Humans of New York. I truly believe that everyone has a story, but not everyone has a platform to tell it. So, I wanted to do my best to tell the stories of the people who never would if they weren’t asked. 

When I meet up with the person I give them a really vague prompt, like “just talk about something that impacts you everyday,” or “[what’s] something cool that happened to you today?” or “[what’s] something that is significant in your life?” and then they just rattle off whatever they can think of off the top of their head. Interviews are no more than three minutes long.

Sometimes we’ll end up talking for 20 minutes after the recorder is off because we end up getting into such a good conversation, and why stop something that’s good?

Q: Because you are in the Class of 2017, how are you going to hand off the account? Do you have any plans for that?

A: I think it would be cool to give it to a current junior at the end of the year, because then they’ll be in their senior year and be the place where I am and want to get to know the people around them. There’s something special about having a Senior doing it because they’ve seen more and experienced more.

Q: What do you hope people take away from the account or what kind of feelings are you hoping to instill upon people?

A: I hope that, if anything, people realize this campus and this University is so diverse and that there are so many people with stories to tell. You truly don’t know a person until you ask them to tell their story, just as much as you think you can narrow someone down to a couple of sentences, they probably have years and years worth of stories and life experiences to tell you. 

It just shows that there is more to a person than what they show on the surface, and it’s our job to figure it out as people trying to get to know people that we’re walking past every day and hope that they can share some wisdom with us. 

You can find the stories as reported by Conniff on Instagram by following @uofshumans.