Kalina Silverman thought she was alone. She was wrong.
As a freshman at Northwestern University, Silverman had a tough time adjusting to life on the Evanston, Illinois campus. While writing an article for her journalism class about her experience, she asked the class of 2016 on Facebook if they had similar experiences, and the stories came flooding in.
"It made me realize that everyone goes through tough stuff and they just don't talk about it," Silverman, now 20, told The Huffington Post in an interview. "Then the next year I was having a really deep conversation with one of my friends and said 'Wow, I wish every conversation could be like this,' and he said how much he hated small talk. Immediately the idea of 'Big Talk' popped into my mind and it grew from there."
Silverman began her project called "Big Talk" where she approaches strangers on the street and films their responses to bigger life questions, like "What do you want to do before you die?" She hopes that by labeling it "Big Talk" the concept won't seem as intimidating as it initially sounds.
"My dream for the whole concept is for it to become a social movement where people want to have big talk in every day life," she said. "I'd love to have discussions or groups to talk about these things. I want it to inspire people to go up to strangers and start asking these kind of questions when they meet them."
Her social experiment raked in some seriously emotional responses. Watch the video above to see the seriously emotional responses her social experiment raked in.
As a freshman at Northwestern University, Silverman had a tough time adjusting to life on the Evanston, Illinois campus. While writing an article for her journalism class about her experience, she asked the class of 2016 on Facebook if they had similar experiences, and the stories came flooding in.
"It made me realize that everyone goes through tough stuff and they just don't talk about it," Silverman, now 20, told The Huffington Post in an interview. "Then the next year I was having a really deep conversation with one of my friends and said 'Wow, I wish every conversation could be like this,' and he said how much he hated small talk. Immediately the idea of 'Big Talk' popped into my mind and it grew from there."
Silverman began her project called "Big Talk" where she approaches strangers on the street and films their responses to bigger life questions, like "What do you want to do before you die?" She hopes that by labeling it "Big Talk" the concept won't seem as intimidating as it initially sounds.
"My dream for the whole concept is for it to become a social movement where people want to have big talk in every day life," she said. "I'd love to have discussions or groups to talk about these things. I want it to inspire people to go up to strangers and start asking these kind of questions when they meet them."
Her social experiment raked in some seriously emotional responses. Watch the video above to see the seriously emotional responses her social experiment raked in.