For those who might be unaware, Humans of New York is a Facebook page that documents the weird and wonderful people of New York.

Photographer Brandon Stanton set up the page in 2010 with the intention of talking to and photographing 10,000 New Yorkers and it's become something of an institution in the meantime. Other cities have set up their own pages, including one here in Dublin, and the stories posted are often meaningful, humourous and sometimes truly emotional.

The latest post for Humans Of New York, however, is an interesting one. Back in the '70s, Hillary Rodham wasn't running for President of the United States or even serving as Secretary Of State or even First Lady. She was just a young woman trying sit the admissions exam for Harvard Law.

Here's her story, in full and unedited. “I was taking a law school admissions test in a big classroom at Harvard. My friend and I were some of the only women in the room. I was feeling nervous. I was a senior in college. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do. And while we’re waiting for the exam to start, a group of men began to yell things like: ‘You don’t need to be here.’ And ‘There’s plenty else you can do.’ It turned into a real ‘pile on.’ One of them even said: ‘If you take my spot, I’ll get drafted, and I’ll go to Vietnam, and I'll die.’ And they weren’t kidding around. It was intense. It got very personal. But I couldn’t respond."

"I couldn’t afford to get distracted because I didn’t want to mess up the test. So I just kept looking down, hoping that the proctor would walk in the room. I know that I can be perceived as aloof or cold or unemotional. But I had to learn as a young woman to control my emotions. And that’s a hard path to walk. Because you need to protect yourself, you need to keep steady, but at the same time you don’t want to seem ‘walled off.’ And sometimes I think I come across more in the ‘walled off’ arena."

"And if I create that perception, then I take responsibility. I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional. And neither do my friends. And neither does my family. But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that."

 

Via Facebook