{"id":4049,"date":"2018-06-01T12:33:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T16:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=4049"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:20:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T18:20:21","slug":"siblings-in-the-big-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2018\/06\/01\/siblings-in-the-big-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Siblings in the Big City"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The Stauffer siblings \u2013 Steven ’10 (left), Jessica ’03 and Michael ’06 \u2013 share a laugh during a photo shoot at the High Line Park in Manhattan. (There’s one more Stauffer sibling, sister Kaitlin ’15, who lives in Virginia.) (Photos by Jon Styer)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The nearly dozen years Michael Stauffer ’06<\/strong> has spent in New York have revealed a constant beauty in the city\u2019s energy: optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery single day, something can and may happen that will be a new opportunity, to completely change where I am and what I\u2019m doing,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery day, there\u2019s just a chance something amazing is going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael is the second of the three Stauffer siblings from New Market, Virginia, to move to New York. He developed and emcees the weekly frolic \u201cNot Your Standard Bingo\u201d at the Standard Highline Hotel \u2013 it sells out weeks in advance \u2013 and recently contracted a weekly trivia night. And he\u2019s hosted San Diego Comic Con bingo with Conan O\u2019Brien, Comedy Central activities at the South by Southwest Festival, an NFL Fan Style Showdown with Erin Andrews, and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than anywhere else I\u2019ve ever\u00a0been in my life or in the world, New York is a city where you walk out the front door and someone can just walk up to you, say, \u2018Hey, I know you from such-and-such, and you know what? You should be in this thing that we\u2019re doing,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s really the world\u2019s best library for experiences and just getting a 101 on different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Michael\u2019s older sister Jessica ’03<\/strong> was first to the city, though she worked in a California bookstore before moving back to be the program and development coordinator at the American Booksellers Association in White Plains. She advocates for independent booksellers by fostering relationships with publishers, planning conferences, and researching and creating marketing materials like the Indie Next List or fliers for bookstore windows.<\/p>\n

She lives close enough to the city to return for shows and fine dining but far enough away that the sounds of city life don\u2019t reach her living room. Don\u2019t let her bookworm introversion fool you, though \u2013 a big reason for attending EMU was its stretching cross-cultural requirement. She traveled to France and the Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus on language, culture and history of two very different but connected places meant that I was able to start to grasp the complexity of another place and culture,\u201d she said. That \u201cinkling\u201d has developed in her years surrounded by the \u201chuge variety of different cultures\u201d in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found I had developed a curiosity to learn more about the complexity of how someone had grown up, what they retained, and what they let go of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Steven ’10<\/strong> \u2013 sibling number three \u2013 graduated already feeling the pull of New York. It was nearly two years, though, before the move happened on short notice, for an interview that didn\u2019t bring him work for another year.<\/p>\n

Now, he\u2019s \u201cswamped\u201d with freelance video and photography projects \u2013 an ad for an app, a TV mini series, an Uninterrupted<\/em> episode about Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia, a short movie \u2013 and his portfolio (view it at stevenstauffer.com) is affecting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always been called \u2018sensitive,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI do connect more with the emotional side of a project, how that translates visually and aesthetically, than I do with flashy camera tricks or big, expensive equipment.\u201d That\u2019s what EMU taught him \u2013 soul. Film school may have taught him more technique, but he would go to EMU over a film school again because its liberal arts focus was on \u201cthe part that\u2019s harder, the stuff you don\u2019t learn on set: the why, and the motivation, and everything behind the technical facts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The nearly dozen years Michael Stauffer ’06 has spent in New York have revealed a constant beauty in the city\u2019s energy: optimism. \u201cEvery single day, something can and may happen that will be a new opportunity, to completely change where I am and what I\u2019m doing,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery day, there\u2019s just a chance something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":4050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,944],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-springsummer-2018","issues-spring-summer-2018"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4055,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions\/4055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}