One morning in their second semester at Minerva University, students Stephanie Froebel and Ethan Willick 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 Willick and Froebel 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,” said Willick.
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 the current semester in Berlin.
“My favorite ‘One Day’ memories are the premieres, watching people re-live their memories with each other,” said Froebel. “Seeing how everyone has grown and changed, and revisiting the incredible experiences we have gotten to have.”
The project is not formally affiliated with Minerva University. Willick and Froebel hope One Day will encourage other students at the nonprofit university to film and reflect on their experiences.
Six student editors work in post production, sorting through a terabyte of footage, with more coming in. They reflect the global nature of the class of 2025: Yasuko Kinoshita (Japan), Lucille Glassman (U.S.), Alexia Benakova (Slovakia), and Victoria Stark (Austria).
“I want to be proud that I helped,” Stark said. “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 Willick, who is from Saint Louis, Missouri.
“In the moment, Minerva can be overwhelming because there’s so much to learn, experience and do,” said Froebel, who is from Buffalo, New York. “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 studying Computer Science 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,” Etherington said.
Alma Pinchuk, from Israel, put it this way: “I spend so much time studying. Having to film makes me take a step back.”
Willick and Froebel’s goal is to create a time capsule of their years at Minerva University. “One Day” has personal meaning for Willick because of his college search a few years ago. He applied to and got into nine colleges: NYU, Tulane, Elon, American, George Washington, Brandeis, Northeastern, Skidmore and Minerva University.
He chose Minerva because, as he made his choice, he liked the students he met 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.”
Minerva University senior Stephanie Froebel