Colin Jerolmack: How a sociologist became The Pigeon Guy
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2013
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Colin Jerolmack was floundering in grad school until he found deep insights into human nature... from pigeons.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.0 | Is NYU a scientist? |
| 0:06.0 | I felt. |
| 0:07.0 | I was so... |
| 0:09.0 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:10.0 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:13.0 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:19.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Ben Lilly, and welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring your true stories of how science has affected people's lives. |
| 0:30.1 | This week's story is from Colin Jeryl Mack. |
| 0:33.2 | The story was recorded in September 2012 at Union Hall in Brooklyn. |
| 0:38.0 | The theme of the event was Animals. |
| 0:43.7 | Ten years ago, I decided that I was going to apply to graduate school for sociology. |
| 0:48.0 | My advisor convinced me that this was going to be a really good idea, and that I was going to be a shoe-in. |
| 0:52.5 | I was a great writer. |
| 0:53.5 | I had a 4.0. I was just going to knock shoe in. I was a great writer. I had a 4.0, you know, I was |
| 0:55.0 | just going to knock them dead. And so I applied to a bunch, like 20 of the most selective |
| 0:59.5 | sociology programs in the country, and I got rejected from every one of them. And so I kind |
| 1:05.0 | of fled to South America and backpacked for a year and collected myself and thought about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. And my advisor, you know, said, get back in the saddle. You know, come on, just apply |
| 1:15.0 | to some more. So I applied to some more modest schools. And I got in somewhere. I got into some, |
| 1:19.2 | to City University of New York. And so I, you know, I showed up there that fall and I was immediately |
| 1:24.0 | feeling a little insecure about if I had what it took to be a sociologist |
| 1:28.3 | and I didn't get into any of these programs. |
... |
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