‘Humans of Oshkosh’ challenges UW-Oshkosh students to find the stories in every person

OSHKOSH, Wis. (WBAY) - Ten years and thousands of stories told.

The latest contributors to a project called “Humans of Oshkosh” celebrated a decade of student storytelling at the Oshkosh Public Library Wednesday afternoon.

Everybody has a story, which is why when Grace Lim became a professor at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, she wanted her students to learn how to communicate with people of all backgrounds.

As a result, sophomores at UW-Oshkosh who take her course, “Telling stories for fun, profit, and world peace,” are challenged to find unique stories by talking to people all throughout Oshkosh.

“I’m a nursing student, so I find it very important to have that social aspect and be able to talk to different people, and I do think this class really helped because you do have to talk to people. It’s very much hands-on compared to learning in the classroom,” said Breanna Schicker.

Their assignment is to find people in the community of all different ages, shapes, colors and backgrounds and tell their stories.

Personal stories from this year and past years are currently on display at the Oshkosh Public Library this year.

Students were required to look for stories inside of the library, honoring the building’s 125th anniversary.

“To be behind the scenes, making the stories, and putting them out there, feels good to be like ‘Yeah, I found someone else’s story that you can share with the world’, because some of these stories are truly remarkable,” said Austin Fuchs.

Some students even took it upon themselves to interview visitors to this event to further expand their skills.

“Over the past ten years, my students have produced over 4,000 Humans of Oshkosh Facebook posts, which means so many people have shared their stories about love and loss and war and despair and joy, and it’s amazing that they can share those kinds of stories with us and we can all learn from each other,” founder Grace Lim said.

Anyone interested in seeing their work can visit the “Humans of Oshkosh” Facebook page, which already has a backlog of over 4,000 stories ready for people to check out.