This week’s campus celebrity, Mary Zhu, is a Delta Gamma, Habitat for Humanity worker and my R.A. Mary was born in Tianjin, China and moved to Chicago, Illinois when she was four years old. Mary says the Chinese schools are much bigger than American ones and start teaching kids hard concepts at an early age. Mary said she was learning multiplication at age four, so when she got to Chicago and started learning multiplication in third grade, her classmates thought she was a genius!
After a childhood in China and Chicago, Mary started applying to colleges and decided to apply to Denison. Mary didn’t know that much about Denison until her campus visit. She said seeing the students walking around and going to classes gave her a really good vibe. She said it felt normal. So Mary moved from China to Chicago to Granville, OH. In addition to being a Delta Gamma and apart of Habitat for Humanity, Mary is also the DCA events coordinator. She says she loves community service because she likes how rewarding it is and loves feeling so good after helping out. This summer, Mary hopes to study abroad in Korea! Mary wants to study how social media influences young people to get plastic surgery in their culture. She’s also really excited about getting to eat the Korean food!
Being a RA, Mary says, has its good and bad moments. She does not like the long, loud nights, or having to repeatedly tell the girls to clean their hair out of the shower. However, she loves meeting all the freshmen and getting to hear all the gossip in Shorney Hall. Ultimately, Mary became an RA because she loves interacting with everyone and the fourth floor could not be happier to have her!