Human Connection at EHS

1. Holiday Grams - Ella Campbell, Cate Phelps and Ali Rinard

For our connections project, we wanted to incorporate the holiday season. We made paper presents and wrote “Happy Holidays,” along with compliments on the back. This was similar to opening a present, and that fit our idea of creating something related to the holidays. Compliments are proven to increase self-esteem and make others feel more confident in who they are. Just one compliment can affect someone’s day greatly, making it better than it was destined to be. This helps to build relationship skills and confidence to go out of your way to spread joy. After walking around the school and delivering small gifts with compliments to people we saw, we learned that our effort to connect people makes a difference in people’s day. Also, it can create a moment that might inspire others to affect another’s day. This whole project shows that trying to make a difference by connecting with people can leave a lasting impression.

2. What Are You Listening To? - Ryan Batchelder, Stephanie Franceschi and Alexa Gibney, Aastha Patel

We feel that, a lot of the time, our school is just a place to learn rather than to make larger connections and friendships. Because of this, the atmosphere can sometimes be a little harsh. Often, we just know faces. Only occasionally do we know their name. How sad is that? To try and fix this issue, we chose to ask our classmates what they were listening to or what was the last song they listened to. After collecting and listing the songs that we gathered, we divided them by genre to show the diverse music taste in our school, and we displayed it on a pie chart. We felt this was a good topic because we knew how much the people around us value music, and asking them what they were listening to prompted us to start up random conversations. This topic could also influence others' music tastes by introducing them to new genres and artists. 

We knew that music (even though it was personal) wouldn’t dig into a person too much, so it would provide a safe space for a healthy discussion. In order to have a real conversation with someone, it is necessary that both people feel comfortable and our topic allows this to happen. Since a person's music taste can say so much, we knew we’d be able to find out something new about them. Finding out what songs a person may like allows us to start conversations that probably wouldn’t have been created otherwise, which helps make a larger community at EHS. It also forced us to step out of our comfort zone and make conversations with (most often) random people, showing human connections being made. We gained the knowledge that most people are willing to have a conversation, but they may be too scared to start one on their own. Even though it may seem awkward to make these kinds of interactions, a lot of the time the success of the conversations is determined based on how you present yourself. We found that, a lot of the time, when you were confident, people had an easier time opening up; whereas when you came off as nervous, the conversation would stay pretty dry. So we are asking you to take this project with an open mind and talk to others about anything, it could even be as simple as music. 

3. Presenting Origami to Strangers - Jamie Higgins 

For many years I’ve been good at keeping myself entertained with anything. Cats in a cradle, organizing items into arbitrary categories, daydreaming; I’ve always found a way to keep myself busy. One case began in elementary school when I got bored of memorizing my multiplication table. I started doing origami because small paper animals, boats, and crabs are more interesting than class.

Today, I think my geometry class is interesting, and I still make origami in my downtime after finishing my work. However, I never did anything with them after I was done. I’ve always thought my creations were cool, and when I gave them to people they usually agreed or, at worst, thought of them as common. 

With a decidedly niche hobby, the fun was in the process, and I was left with a lined paper stegosaurus. So, I started giving them to my peers. After being at school for up to seven hours, people seemed to be slightly less exhausted with their day when they received one. On one occasion, someone made me a crane with a note in response, and another returned the gift with a drawing.  

So if you have applicable talents, don’t be afraid to share them with the people around you. If not, it might not be a bad idea to share other offers of appreciation with the people around you. More likely than not, it might make someone’s day better.

4. Last Meal on Earth - Braeden Gwinn, Will Tobin and Garrett White 

If you had only a couple more hours to live, and you were given the meal of your choice, what would you eat? This was the question we wanted to ask a number of different people at EHS. To carry out this act, we decided to find and walk up to random people throughout the school and ask this question in order to collect different data from different people. Food is a large part of some cultures, which allowed for lots of diverse responses to our question.

This idea was decided upon after careful consideration of how we could incorporate connection and communication in our community. We took inspiration from many social media trends and brainstormed questions we could ask people in order to generate conversation. Ultimately, it came down to questions that could relate to people and really get them to think and express their opinions and feelings. That’s how we came up with the question, “What would your last meal on Earth be?”

Although this may just sound like a simple experiment, there are many things that came out of it. Asking somebody what they would want their last meal to be digs a little deeper than just food. Some people who took a little longer thinking about what food they would choose may be more thoughtful people. People who answer quickly may love to express themselves and don't hesitate to do so. 

Some takeaways from the experiment are that some people are more open to conversation than you may think they are, and social experiments lead to a greater understanding of people based on their actions and behaviors.

Overall, our experiment was a great example of showing what you can learn about someone just by asking a simple question. The idea that the current generation hides behind their screens isn’t a myth but a big problem. By stepping out of your comfort zone, you can accomplish great things and learn so much more about the amazing world we live in. You never know, you could find something life-changing just by starting a conversation with a stranger. 

5. Survey the Class - Alex Dobbins

For the Human Connection project, I wanted to do something simple yet interesting. No better way to do that than to ask the random people around me what they had for dinner last night! I wanted to force myself to do something that would require me to talk to people, somehow. I wanted to go out of my comfort zone (but not too far to make it uncomfortable). A study done by Harvard Psychology students shows that asking questions, specifically asking follow-up questions, increases likeability and positive impressions. Which is why, after receiving the answer to the simple question, “What did you have for dinner?” I asked, “Was it good?” This may be a simple follow-up, a yes or no question. But by doing that, I showed interest in what someone had to say and had an interest in learning more. So, even though it may sound intimidating, asking someone a random question isn’t actually that bad. At first, it was kind of awkward, as the people I was asking weren’t really my friends, but they were more so people I was acquainted with or had some sort of friendly relationship with. It got easier as I went on; it was just kind of random. Overall, I’d call the project a success, and would definitely recommend others to do similar things in their own small or large communities.

6. Pass on the Kindness - Brooke Battle and Celia Zagami 

When introduced to Mrs Christains’ Honors English assignment about Human Connection during our reading of The Catcher in the Rye, it took some thinking to decide what would be the best approach to this project. In retrospect, human connection is constant—daily, hourly—it happens all the time. It can be as simple as holding the door for the person behind you, paying for the next person in line when you're in a drive-through, or simply giving someone a smile. Though there were many ideas and routes we could have chosen for this assignment, we chose a project centered around spreading kindness. Our idea was to create a bulletin board with envelopes filled with notes that could be passed on throughout the days between the students of EHS. These notes have messages on them that are anywhere from kind, funny or encouraging; they were inspired by the notes we find in Chinese fortune cookies. We chose this note method to spread kindness because, when thinking of all the ways our days have been made better, we thought of our peers and the conversations we have with them throughout the day. With just a little interaction from our friends throughout the school day, it makes our day 10 times better than it would be without it. Though we are not all friends in this school, we can still have connections with each other, and this is one way to start. Our hope is that with these messages we can spread kindness to those that need it and inspire others to realize the effect it can have on someone's day. 

7. Complimenting a Stranger - Ella Garon, Mikayla Mulkigian and Mia Pupino

Everyone loves getting compliments whether it's their hair, clothes, makeup, smile etc. Compliments make someone not only feel seen but more confident. Yet, compliments are becoming more and more rare. When we first took up this project we couldn't remember the last time we complimented someone or we had been complimented ourselves. Compliments are beneficial to the complimenter and complimentee; therefore, we should be giving compliments a whole lot more!

While compliments seem simple, it actually is statistically proven to have a large impact. Studies show when you receive or give compliments it is a positive and free way to boost happiness. You tend to feel better about yourself and build a deeper connection with others. According to WC Healthy Memory, “It releases neurotransmitter Dopamine; in other words, is what boosts our mood. It's what makes us happy and excited rather than sad and depressed. Another study has shown complimenting helps improve our long-term memory.” 

To put this theory to the test, we walked around the school and complimented a total of 12 strangers. When we did this, people often had a smile on their faces and walked away holding themselves a little higher and happier. In some cases, we saw them walking around again and they gave us a smile, which was astonishing considering we had never spoken to them before. This further proves the idea that complimenting strangers builds a deeper connection.

At the end of the day, everyone loves compliments from your clothes to your hair or the way you smile. It makes you feel better about yourself and you can make other people feel better about themselves, too. So we encourage you to compliment someone every day, because with just one kind word you could be making that person's day.

8. Last Day on Earth - Luca Theos and Sean Haugh

We went around the school and interviewed random people only asking one question: if you had one day left to live, who would you spend it with? Our interviewees ranged from teachers to boys and girls, and we got many different answers. We came up with the idea because we were thinking of a question that would be easier to answer but also has a deep meaning. A common response was “Mom” or “Dad,” some decided to say their significant others, and others chose close friends. Many people also just said family in general, but we told them they could only go with one. After the interviews were conducted, it was clear that the main person people would spend their last day with would be their mom or dad. More boys said their dad and more girls said their mom. It reiterates that family is the most important thing to many people. It was a cool thing to see that people still have great relationships with their families and would choose them over anyone else.

9. Best or Worst Day Ever - Max DeKoning

This project can be interpreted in many different ways, but I chose to look at it as an opportunity to spread happiness and understanding in our school, especially among the students. My idea was to ask and interview other students about their best or worst days ever, as well as share other responses from previous interviews. This allowed people to share without feeling like they were being judged, especially after hearing about other peers' experiences. I came up with the idea because I wanted to know more about my peers and to create connections that didn’t previously exist in our school. The research for this idea started with the National Library of Medicine, which gave me the reasoning I needed to jumpstart this project. They stated, “one of the most fundamental characteristics of human beings is their social nature. Humans have a strong motivation to form social bonds with conspecifics and to share their experiences with them” and this truly shows how important it is to facilitate connections within our own community (Wagner et al.). When implementing this idea, I got mixed responses at first, with the majority being about the person's best day versus their worst day, but eventually, it became easier for people to share, especially after hearing about others’ experiences. I received a variety of answers. Despite some sad responses about the worst days ever, the mixed emotions that connected everybody who shared easily strengthened relations at our school and helped facilitate human connection.

10.  Give Out Homebaked Cookies - Lotus Gregory

The other night, my grandmother made our family cookies, and although my family is already close, having cookies together was a way to bond and appreciate each other. Who doesn’t appreciate a home-baked cookie? This was the question I asked myself while thinking about this project. The answer, I guessed, was slim to none. In fact, in the United States alone, 7 billion cookies are eaten each year. I believe that giving out home-baked cookies was a foolproof way to bring my English class together, seeing as many people did not know each other. When I brought in a platter of cookies for the class, their responses were nothing but overjoyed and appreciative. I believe this was a result of an out-of-pocket act of kindness to people, which is very rare in the modern world. This makes each special moment that much sweeter, and it creates lasting memories. It is also worth noting the positive effects on the provider of kindness. Although it would have brought me immense joy to eat all the cookies myself, giving them out to others genuinely made me feel even better. It was like the feeling of being a contributor to making the world a better place.  There is no denying that our modern world is very fast-paced. Amid all this hustle and bustle, there is a clear lack of connection between people. We are on a mission to change this narrative at EHS. Why not start with a delicious treat? 

11.  Three Things on an Island - James Bernich, Isaac Gordon, Peter Herring and Owen Wagner 

We asked people the question “What are 3 things that you would take with you on a tropical island?” We asked a total of nine people, five of them being students and the other four being teachers. In this experiment, we wanted to highlight how human interaction can come in all different forms. We decided to connect with someone on a level that isn’t seen all that often. An example of this is on the YouTube channel “Call of Duty League” where the host asked each player what three things they would bring with them on an island. The channel has over 1.50 million subscribers, and this specific video received over 10,000 views. The video gained a significant amount of attention, showing how asking people our question guaranteed some sort of positive human connection. 

There were many takeaways that were brought from this project. First, we were able to dive into a couple of students’ and teachers' minds to ask them the same question. Second, many of them had different answers to the same question, which actually surprised us. 

12. Last Text - Madison Guimond, Antigone Romano, Mirranda Sessler and Elaina Villaflores 

Interviewing our peers at EHS facilitated human connection by promoting communication through texting, which is currently one of the main forms of interaction we see on a daily basis. Asking what an individual’s last text was allows you to get a snapshot of their life from an outside perspective. This is because you can see who they really are with their friends, not just who they present themselves as in the school setting. This idea came to us through a popular social media trend where someone asks another person who has headphones in, ‘What are you listening to?’ Our version was similar because it still allowed us the opportunity to look into someone's life and learn about them, without it being too personal. When we went into Ms. Ramsay’s Vocal Ensemble class and asked for volunteers to be interviewed, everyone raised their hands, so Ms. Ramsay had to choose a few to go into the hallway. This shows that people were interested in making human connections and participating in socialization with peers they may or may not be familiar with.

13. Pet Portraits - Bailey Cooper

My idea for this project was “Pet Portraits.” This is simply where a group of people are instructed to share a photo of their pet (if they don’t have one, then a picture of an animal they would like to be their pet). Then, they are assigned a photo of someone else’s pet to make a portrait of. They may use any style or medium they desire. The main objective is to have fun, be creative, and make everyone’s pet feel fabulous.

I came up with this idea by thinking about how much people enjoy conversing about their pets. So I thought it would be a fun idea to make “Pet Portraits” so people can meet others through their pets in a connective and creative way!

In this article, psychologists express how wonderful of a tool art can be for expression, communication, and connection between others. In another article, we can see how our pets also positively affect our relationships and connections with others. Domesticated animals are great at connecting with others, that’s part of how they became domesticated in the first place!

The following are my takeaways from this project:

1. The participants seemed to overall enjoy the activity and appreciate being able to make something nice for another. 

2. It showed me how eager people were to participate and connect with others (5-6 participants followed through). 

3. It showed me how much art and animals have a positive impact on our lives.

14.  Unpopular Opinion - Elizabeth Madley and Sela Shanelaris

For our Human Connection Project, we decided to interview people and ask them about an unpopular opinion they have. This was an interesting interview question because we got to hear how people really feel about certain trends or topics. Whether it was about food, fashion, or music people’s opinions can differ greatly. We decided on this topic because hearing other people’s opinions people might allow them to connect by generating discussion about something that they disagree on. We’ve seen influencers on social media do interviews similar to this, so before interviewing people we looked at the different approaches they took to give us some inspiration. Ultimately, this project was a great experience. It was so much fun to walk around, meet new people, and hear an interesting opinion they have on a popular topic. This was a great project and we would do it again, but if we could do one thing differently we would interview during a time like lunch so we could get as many people involved as possible. Overall this project was so much fun and we were able to talk to so many new people.

• See below for some responses we heard:

• “What is an unpopular opinion you have?”

• Annabelle Duffey 10th Grade - “Taylor Swift is overhyped”

• Madison Guyman 10th Grade - “Super high-rise jeans are not cute”

• Mirranda Sessler 10th Grade - “The makeup trend with eyebrows slicked straight up is not cute”

• Sydney Collarmore 10th Grade - “Pineapple doesn’t belong on pizza”

• Molly Baut 10th Grade - “No one can pull off jorts”

• Katie Crowley 11th Grade - “Cheese is really bad”

• Kassidy Hall 12th Grade - “Stanleys are too big to bring to school”

• Colleen Bartel 12th Grade - “Mini uggs are overrated” 

15.  Voicing a Hidden Compliment - Claire Ahern and Ava Gibson

What sparked our idea for human connection was something that affected us personally. We questioned what really connects us with someone we may not know or be very close with, which led us to create the exchange of compliments. Commonly, I find myself thinking about the people around me and what compliments I might give; but I find myself not always able to share them, avoiding connection. So here was our idea: we created a bold colorful poster in the red commons posing the question “What was the last compliment you gave?” This idea was something we thought would create a questioning moment for the reader. If successful, people will question the connections they make with others and also inspire them to think out loud and share those hidden compliments, creating a meaningful connection. 

16.  Continue the Drawing - Oscar Schaffer and Henri Zigmont

For our Human Connection Project, we decided to walk up to random people ranging from freshman students all the way up to teachers and ask them, for 15 seconds, to continue our drawing.  The 15-second timer added pressure and limited one individual's role in the collaborative piece ensuring we could connect with as many people as possible. In total we made two masterpieces, connecting with around 15-25 different people. This was an effective way to connect with people, as—after the timer was up—people smiled together looking at others' contributions and the picture as a whole. Overall, connecting with people we wouldn’t have previously was a fun, uplifting experience, and looking at the before and after of the “art pieces” made a couple of people laugh.

17. Compliment Box - Liam McLynch and Mitchell Murcin 

We made a box of compliments, with a system of taking a compliment and making one yourself. We thought this was a great way to encourage connection because one thing that tends to hinder connection between people is a lack of confidence or embarrassment. But with the box of compliments, it both compliments and encourages people which can lead to more confidence and, in turn, more interaction with others. Compliments are a great way to connect because even giving a small compliment can really make someone’s day and push them to be positive, and maybe even compliment others, starting a cycle of positivity and connection. Also, giving compliments is not only beneficial to others, but to yourself as well. According to thedaily.case.edu, giving compliments can increase your happiness, make you grateful, and boost stress resilience and physical health. Finally, the compliment box can be a stepping stone to people being kinder in general. For example, if someone takes and gives a compliment, and it makes them feel good, it could lead them to just compliment others without a box, which is great for connection throughout the community.