Several students contributed language skills to the project, allowing Exceeding Expectations to follow seniors who don't speak English: a Mailman student fluent in Mandarin, a Mailman student and a recent Columbia undergraduate fluent in Spanish.

For public health students who often think in terms of entire populations, spending an extended period of time with individuals, and telling their stories, can be extremely valuable — adding richness, complexity, and nuance to population studies. "Storytelling reconnects us with people. It's human nature to have an emotional response to anecdotes, and statistics don’t always make the same impression," says Sociomedical Sciences student Lauren Isaacs, who helped to recruit Exceeding Expectations participants and has been following Otto Neals, an artist in Crown Heights, and George Blomme and Doug McClure, a retired couple who hope to marry this year. (Their stories will be published on the site later this fall.)

While specific policy changes are not a primary goal, the team behind Exceeding Expectations hopes the project will put real stories to the issues older people face. "Until we expand our assumptions about who we are to include people of all ages, the institutional and policy changes won’t happen," says Finkelstein. "It's only when you understand who all the people are in the world that you can make a world for all the people." To that end, Exceeding Expectations is working to get their stories to policy makers, community organizations, and advocates.

At the end of the day, Block hopes that visitors to the site — no matter their age — will learn something new about themselves and about growing older. "There's such beauty in reaching later life, and it's a victory for our society that we’re living longer," she says. "When people go onto the site, I hope they’ll think, 'Wow, I can do more with my life now, and the future is not something to fear, it can be a great place to be.'"

To follow along with Exceeding Expectations, visit their website and subscribe for weekly email updates with links to new stories.

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