It's been another busy school year for NYU Stories. We baked a pie with the president and did yoga with a lawyer, tallied up the funniest alumni to appear on Saturday Night Live and debated whether shame can be used for good.
Then, to top it all off, we got a bunch of professors to sing (yep, sing!), karaoke-style, an '80s-pop farewell to this year's batch of graduating students. (You might consider it our final gift to the class of 2015.)
But if all that's not enough, here's a list of 15 more stories to remind you of all that's weird and wonderful about this place—a multimedia memento from the 2014-15 school year and a tribute to the kind of stuff that happens only at NYU.
1.
"He came, he gave, and he didn't take anything for himself. He gave a lot more to America than he got from America."
Meet Albert Gallatin, NYU's Founding Father
2.
Sex. Race. Age. Emotional State. Personality. These are just some of the characteristics the human brain gleans about another person through split-second visual perceptions—a process studied extensively at NYU's Social Cognitive & Neural Sciences Lab.
3.
"New Yorkers don’t mean to be rude; they’re just impatient. Time is highly valued here, so we show others respect by making an effort not to waste theirs."
Why Do New Yorkers Seem So Rude?
4.
Gallatin professor Louise Harpman is the co-owner (with Scott Specht) of the world's largest collection of independently patented disposable coffee lids.
5.
"Lincoln’s death was for many living in 1865 what 9/11 was for us, or the JFK assassination was a generation ago—a startling national tragedy that seared the mundane details of an otherwise ordinary day into permanent memory."
How Americans Mourned Lincoln—or Didn't
6.
Each year, a group of NYU students, alumni, and staff travel to the New York State capitol to advocate for the expansion of state financial aid.
7.
"Blind people, like any readers, could hardly live on a diet of classics alone. There was a growing demand for recordings of works that—whether politically radical or sexually explicit—the Library of Congress deemed inappropriate or unworthy of recording."
Beyond Braille: A History of Reading By Ear
8.
Speaking from New York City’s Union Square Greemarket at the height of the fall harvest, Steinhardt’s Carolyn Dimitri discusses how vouchers for produce can help improve the diets of the economically disadvantaged.
9.
"Every block had an 'auntie'—the person who looked out for everybody, the eyes and ears of the block who knew which kids were misbehaving."
How the Bronx Nurtured the Man Who'd Nurture the City
10.
"There is by nature a basic conflict in the life of an academic between a social life and academic life. I think that a café is a nice bridge between the two. I really feel that some of the cafés in the world are intellectual environments not less than Harvard."
A Clean, Well-Lighted, Well-Caffeinated Place
11.
From 1910 to 1939, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, was home to the Eugenics Record Office, a center for genetic research aimed at preserving a “pure” American hereditary ideal by ridding the nation of the “unfit” and “degenerate."
12.
"I know the building is haunted, because you can feel it."
Traces of an American Tragedy: Inside the Former Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
13.
"Contrary to popular belief, positive thinking might actually hinder us by feigning goal attainment and creating a feeling of satisfaction that consequently drains us of motivational energy. In dreaming it, you undercut the energy you need to do it."
The Downside of Positive Thinking
14.
"Reports of the death of the book have been greatly exaggerated," says Max Schumann, channeling Mark Twain in this video sneak peek at 80WSE's exhibit Learn to Read Art: A Surviving History of Printed Matter.
15.
