This week’s Campus Celebrity interview was a huge honor for me—I got to interview the founder of Her Campus Davidson, Jessie Li. Jessie, a senior from State College PA, founded HC Davidson the spring of her junior year. I was excited to get to know more about this bubbly and vivacious senior.
Major: English
Advice to freshmen self: Work on time management. “I always felt like I was torn between time with wonderful people here and work to pass classes.”
Favorite class: American Women Poets (shout out to Dr. Mills!)
Favorite book: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
An accomplished (and award winning) author, I asked Jessie how her interest in writing began. “When I was younger my dad would make me memorize Chinese poems, so I think that’s where my love of literature came from.” Jessie told me that in fifth grade she wrote thirty poems and at the end of the year her teacher made a bound anthology out of the poems. Jessie wrote a novella for her senior thesis which centers around the coming of age story of a young Asian American girl by discovering her heritage through her grandmother’s story.
(One of) your favorite Davidson memories: “I remember going to a David Guetta concert in Goa when I studied abroad in India my junior year. It was really strange because we just got tickets at the last minute.”
One of my favorite memories of Jessie at Davidson was meeting her at the first Davidson Her Campus meeting because she was so friendly and energetic. When I asked Jessie how she got the idea to establish a HC chapter at Davidson she told me, “I had a friend at Oxford University who wrote for Her Campus. I though it would be nice to have a new voice on campus.” Jessie told me she’s always excited to hear people talking about the Her Campus articles.
Future plans: “I will be an educational consultant in China. My job will be to help students in China get into colleges into the United States.” Jessie said her two passions in life are teaching and writing and this new job will be a great balance of those two things.
Wherever the future takes Jessie, her fabulous fashion sense, creative writing, and kindness will be missed on campus. From all of us at Her Campus Davidson though, we are grateful for the legacy she has created.