How Two Minerva Students Turned Daily Life into a Global Documentary

One morning in their second semester, Stephanie Froebel and Ethan Willick, Class of 2025, cooked breakfast while imagining a project to chronicle their educational journey. They liked the idea of day-in-the-life videos as they rotated around the world. When they mentioned the project to others, dozens of students offered to join the project. With that, the series “One Day” began, chronicling days in the lives of students over four years.

As Stephanie and Ethan prepare to graduate in May, they have become documentary producers. The series “One Day–Minerva” includes footage from 70 students in the Class of 2025, portraying sunrise-to-twilight activities as they live and study in global rotation cities. “It shows what the real life of Minerva students is like, some of the good and the bad,” Ethan says.

The documentary series has released three installments from the Class of 2025’s semesters in Seoul, Taipei, and Hyderabad. The team has two more in post-production – from semesters in Buenos Aires and London – as well as one underway from their current semester in Berlin. The Buenos Aires episode is scheduled to be released on November 15, 2024.

“My favorite ‘One Day’ memories are the premieres, watching people re-live their memories with each other,” Stephanie says. “Seeing how everyone has grown and changed, and revisiting the incredible experiences we have gotten to have.”

The documentary series is a student-initiated and led project. Stephanie and Ethan hope “One Day” will encourage other students at Minerva to film and reflect on their experiences. 

Six student editors work in post-production, sorting through a terabyte of footage, with more coming in. Even the editor team reflects the global nature of Minerva’s Class of 2025: Yasuko Kinoshita (Japan), Lucille Glassman (Colorado, US), Lexi Benakova (Slovakia), and Victoria Stark (Austria). “I want to be proud that I helped,” Victoria says. “I love when students shove their phone in each other’s faces, and we say ‘it’s ‘One Day’ and everyone knows what we mean.” “I’m always so excited to comb through the footage and see what people have been up to,” said Ethan, who is from Missouri, US.

“In the moment, Minerva can be overwhelming because there’s so much to learn, experience, and do,” said Stephanie, who is from New York, US. “This is an excuse to step back, be grateful, and be aware – to capture a moment that is incomparable to any other experience we will likely ever have.”

Every semester, a different set of students film portions. Some choose to record every semester, such as Lydia Etherington, from Canada, who is majoring in Computational Sciences with a concentration in Data Science and Statistics. “Filming for ‘One Day’ helps me capture the strange graphs, buggy code, and late-night moments I want to remember from my undergrad,” Lydia says. Alma Pinchuk, from Israel, put it this way: “I spend so much time studying. Having to film makes me take a step back.”

Stephanie and Ethan’s goal is to create a time capsule of their years at Minerva University. “One Day” has personal meaning for Ethan because of his college search a few years ago. He applied to and was accepted to nine colleges: NYU, Tulane, Elon, American, George Washington, Brandeis, Northeastern, Skidmore, and Minerva University. He chose Minerva because he was excited to have classmates (and friends) from around the world. “I liked Minerva’s model of global cultural immersion built into the curriculum,” he said. “I hoped it would let me learn not just about concepts, but also how to be a human in the modern, globalized world. I learned about this model through vlogs of current students and that’s what really made ‘One Day’ come to life.”

‍If you were inspired by Ethan and Stephanie’s story and are seeking a college experience that will teach you valuable pragmatic skills that will enable you to change the world, apply to join Minerva today.