Humans of RutgersU

Everyone at Rutgers has a story. Let's hear it. Email [email protected] to tell your story.

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Jasmin Zayed, Senior

“A lot of things happened to me during my time at Rutgers. I knew from the start that I wanted to pursue medicine. When I was a sophomore, my father actually passed away - so it was a really hard time for me. I feel like one of my biggest successes at Rutgers has been pulling back from such a harsh incident and proving to people that sometimes your grades may plummet, but at the end of the day, it’s not all about your grades, it’s also about focusing on building your character and strength. I feel like this university, the professors here and the people around me encouraged me to do that and helped me get through such a hard time. As a senior now, I feel very content and fulfilled. I actually already got accepted to medical school so I’m going in August.”

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Ciarra Zatorski, Senior

“I’m majoring in journalism and media studies and minoring in Italian studies. Taking Professor Collins’ fashion journalism class really helped me explore and discover what I wanna do. From there, I was able to create my blog and I know now that I definitely want to go into fashion and fashion journalism. I’ve done a lot while I was in school. I went to five fashion shows for two seasons and I was able to report on them and review them. I was able to make contacts while I was there, I even met Nigel Barker so that was cool. That has led me to my current internship which is in the fashion department at PRC in New York. It’s a lot of fun and I get to work with the clothes on a daily basis and talk to really big editors. It’s so cool to me. I definitely realized all of this because of that class. Fashion journalism is something that I really learned to love and that’s all thanks to Professor Collins.”

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Anthony Myrick-Lawson, Senior

“My mom went to college, but before that, no one really went. So just seeing her work hard to get to where she is and get her Masters degree - it kind of pushed me to come here and work as hard as possible. That’s really my motivation, my inspiration to finish this strong. Push through and not in a selfish way, but focus on you. I feel like we come to college and get so caught up with friends or relationships and stuff like that that we forget to use our time on us and I think being in college should be one of the selfish times of your life. You should focus on you, focus on your career, your goals and stuff like that and try not to get caught up in all the other stuff that’s around you. Don’t forget to focus on you. I think that’s important.”

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Emily Gibbs, Senior

“Junior year, I was thinking about studying abroad and I was like, ‘that’s crazy! Why would I do that? I have no interest.’ but then I was like you know what, maybe I’ll apply just for the heck of it. Let me just see.’ I got accepted and then all of a sudden I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to London!’ And it completely changed my undergrad experience. I learned to really embrace diversity. I learned so much - I feel more independent now and I feel more ready to graduate because of studying abroad. I would definitely go back, a hundred percent any day. Put yourself out there. Get involved with everything and anything even if you’ve never done it - just try it because I feel like college is the one time you could just do anything you want. Have fun and meet people that’s my biggest advice.”

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Crystal Nunoo, Senior

“I like telling stories. I think that’s just the passion and I like the way that I get to do that with film because it encompasses everything. You have to write it out first, you have to know what you want, you have to envision it on paper and make sure other people understand it as well. You have to then translate that to other mediums like video, sound, post-production, sound effects, graphics. It has to come together in the end as well. Just learning those few things, those key things that storytelling allows me to do within media. Filmmaking is what I am most passionate about because I have a full range of mediums to work with. I’m ready to go, but at the same time, I’m glad that I have a place to come back to because I see the process as I’m leaving while other Alumni have still come back and still have a relationship with Rutgers because you’re not going to go out there and get the dream job you want right away.”

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Grace Ibrahimian, Senior

“I am so excited for graduation. I’m excited for being out in the real world. One of my biggest achievements in college was just knowing what I want and going for it - just the way that I’ve changed and grown up. I think one of the hardships, mainly when I first got here, was meeting people and making friends. I came to Rutgers in the middle of the year and everyone already knew each other. Everybody had their friends and I had to find a place to live and all this stuff. Don’t give up. Keep being persistent. You’re gonna get curved a lot, you’re gonna be ignored by a lot of people or doubted - but work on yourself. Challenge yourself. I feel like challenging yourself is so important. If you prove that to yourself first then it’s so much easier to prove it to other people that you can do it.”

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Kim Ballard, Senior

“My freshman year, my friend, he was the closest person that I was with my freshman year. Over the summer after freshman year, he wound up committing suicide and that was something that really impacted me because it made me realize a few things about myself. First, I was studying chemistry and I was very unhappy. It made me realize I’m very depressed on this track and I think I need to get some type of help and at least try to help myself by doing things that I actually care about and that I actually want to do. It kind of made me put my life into perspective - so the following year I wound up changing majors entirely. I started doing things that I loved to do. I started writing. I started performing in sketches and improv. I started performing in plays and I was just a way happier person than I ever was before.”

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Shuang Lu, Research Associate

“I grew up in China. I am particularly interested in international social work and helping local communities back in my home country so I’ve been helping out with the study abroad in China program for four years now. I have a lot of goals, but the most important thing is for students to come out of their comfort zone and to experience a different culture with an open mind. There’s an old Chinese saying, “If you travel for ten thousand miles, you will learn more than reading ten thousand books.” I love that saying and I, myself, love traveling so I hope all the students have some sort of experience too.” 

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Niralee & Andrew

Niralee: “He was the first one to say it, so almost a year, like ten months. I wasn’t expecting it. I definitely felt it, but I didn’t want to be the first one to say it, but we definitely felt it around the same time.”

Andrew: “Her being the philosophy major, there’s more thinking and seeing things from different angles and at times, I have to be weary of that, but because of that, she’s taught me a lot and it’s helped me with things and it’s one of the things I love about her.”

Niralee: “He’s a finance major so he’s very matter-of-fact and I focus so much on humanities that sometimes the way that we think doesn’t always align. I like to analyze a lot. With philosophy we analyze all day even the smallest things, but he is very direct so sometimes the biggest obstacle is that I have to step back and force myself to not think and to take things at just face value.”

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Joe Charette, Director of Rutgers Dining Services

“I’ve been a vegetarian since 1973 and a vegan since the end of last summer. My cardiologist suggested I make the change because I had a 95 percent blockage. So I wasn’t given much of a choice. Since I was already a vegetarian my options were to go vegan as well and try to eliminate all dairy and all added oils. So, I’m a little further than even the average vegan since I don’t consume nuts and avocados - any added oil like olive oil or coconut oil. Nothing. For someone whose life revolves around food it can be difficult. I love to cook and I love to grow food and make my own food at home. Going out to restaurants has become more and more difficult, especially when you want to get together with friends and they pick a place and there’s not a thing there I’m able to eat.”

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Zoe Zyvith, Junior

“Definitely go out there and try anything honestly. Some people feel like this isn’t really the time to do that, but I feel like that’s what keeps people so close-minded about the things that they don’t really experience or find out what their actual talents are. So, if you’re interested in something go out and go try it no matter what your skill level is or how interested you are. You never know what you’re actually going to be interested in until you try it.”

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Cori Anderson, Teaching Instructor

“Russian culture is really beautiful. It differs from ours in that, from the outside people can come across a little rough to Americans. ‘Oh, no one is smiling at me.’ or ‘the waitresses are so rude’, but when you get to know somebody, they are so warm and so welcoming. Everybody comes as strangers and leaves as friends. I want everybody to feel like they have a better idea of what it means to be Russian, that it’s does not necessarily mean that everybody is the same, but we all have something in common and that’s true for every country. There is great pride in the history, the culture, the arts, and the literature. They are really beautiful people, who have so much to offer.”

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Fiona Ambrosio, Junior & Michelle Chen, Senior

Fiona: “Explore with purpose. If you only have two weeks in a foreign country and you really want to do X, Y, and Z, have that planned, but plan it so that you can stop at little places that you’ve never seen before and experience those cultural moments that you’ve never been able to even witness before. So, explore with purpose. Know what you want to do, but be in the moment when you are there.

Michelle: “Be comfortable with being uncomfortable, especially if you have never traveled abroad before. It’s about accepting differences that you see and encounter, and learning to work with them. It is in that that you will be able to find your best experience. So whether that means doing something that you would have never done at home, trying a new food or being more spontaneous. Definitely embracing something that makes you a little uncomfortable.”

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Wiebke Elisabeth Volkhardt, Graduate Student

“People in Germany know a lot about the U.S., but still I felt the best way to get to know a new country is to go there. A lot of things in U.S. politics Germans don’t really understand, it’s very different from our politics and by studying here, I’ve learned so much about how things work and why things work the way they do. I’m often times surprised about how different the countries are because a lot of things I know from Germany, I just took for granted, but when you go abroad, things are not always the same and for me it also makes me think of Germany again. like when I learn about how  things can be done differently, I start to think about why we do things in Germany so I think it’s really fruitful for thinking over things that you thought were just meant to be a certain way.”

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Jonathan Dmitruck, Junior & Jessica DiFabbio, Senior

Jess: “The first couple months, he wasn’t at Rutgers. So I mean I wouldn’t necessarily say that it was difficult, but the only time we really had was on the weekends, but I think that kind of worked out in the long run. We were still able to kind of ease into it and do our own thing for a bit and then bring it together a couple months later. I think a lot of people get really sucked into the relationship. I’ve had friends who’ve fallen off of the face of the earth like in the first couple of months of having a relationship.

John: “I think one of the biggest things with our relationship is that we’ve branched out. We’ve done so much. Over the summer, we went all over the place, we did a road trip and stuff. She was working up in North Jersey, but every weekend we tried to do something. Branch out, do new things together, do stuff you both like and have fun.”

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Annie Nason, Senior

“I have Cerebral Palsy, that's basically my life's story. It means that my muscles on the left side of my body are all pretty tight. That's really what's driving me to be a high school guidance counselor because I know that everybody has a story. I have been thinking about this a lot. I feel like my condition was given to me for a reason. The reason why my condition is so mild is so that I can do something good with it. Telling your story and sharing your story is a powerful thing, and I'm glad that I have the opportunity to do that because not everybody does. I can have an impact through sharing some of the deepest parts of what I've been through and that feels really special to me.”

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Keith Haas, Junior

“Growing up, I always did love music, but I guess it hit me right before high school. I started listening to Bruce Springsteen in my own time and I’m like, ‘Wow, wait, this actually means something.’ Since Freshman Year, I’ve been in the Rutgers University glee club, one of the oldest student clubs on campus. It’s definitely an honor to be in a group with such talented singers and musicians. I’ve always appreciated music, but I never saw myself performing at such a high level. I’m trying to find my niche between journalism, glee club, and radio. It’s a part of the journey. Just, generally, be happy with whatever you’re doing.”