Juliana Lam ’17

You’re coming up on your last semester at Mount Holyoke! How does that feel?

It feels like a slap in the face! It’s making me realize how close I am to leaving the academic bubble. I have to start looking for jobs and be financially dependent!

Do you have any idea where you’ll be after graduation?

I hope to go back to New York City and continue my dream to work in fashion.

You spent a lot of time in New York this summer, too. What were you doing there?

I was interning, and I also started my own business. I was interning for a fashion company called 3.1 Phillip Lim, and I was working on the PR Team from Tuesday to Friday, and then on Monday I would mostly focus on my makeup business. I sell makeup online. I partner with someone who makes it and who has a big connection in the makeup industry. She’s basically my supplier. It’s really fun! I get to connect with customers through the online database.

Can you talk a little bit about your major?

I can’t come up with a reason for why I chose anthropology. It made sense to me, and I think anthropology is an avenue for progression in society. Anthropology constantly keeps me questioning the things I read. The theories are really dense, but I apply them to my daily life and they’re applicable to different situations. Ethnographies are really fun to read.

Did you know you wanted to be an Anthropology major when you came to MHC?

I didn’t even know what anthropology was. I actually was drawn to anthropology because of my intro. class. As much as people didn’t like the professor—he was a visiting professor—I had a lot of fun doing the experiments. For one of the projects, basically I sat in a Starbucks doing a lot of provocative activities and I interpreted people’s reactions, and I had friends there watching throughout the entire event, and I wrote a paper on it. It was a great reflection. I feel like anthropology is very interactive. It’s not just reading and writing, reading and writing. Like I said, it’s very applicable to daily life.

What about your Studio Art minor?

I’m not a great artist. I’m terrible at drawing. I was really scared of welding; I was so scared. I think what made me decide to minor in studio art was the professors. I also like the fact that in art there are no right or wrong answers. Just like in anthropology there are no right or wrong answers, you just keep defining it.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I’m a huge fan of online shopping! I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I eat. I really, really like watching travel and eating videos. I’m a foodie. I really like eating. Actually, I have a really weird hobby- I like to watch competitive eating. Not like the gross men shoving hot dogs in their mouths, but the girls doing it in Japan. It’s like muk-bang. (Korean term for eaters.)

Who is someone you look up to and why?

That’s a really hard question! This might be really weird-sounding, but the first person that came to mind was this famous historian. His name is Sun Yat-Sen. He is called the father of China. He was a doctor. He studied neuroscience and medicine back in the early 20th century, and he was actually the only student that graduated from the University of Hong Kong that year for his doctorate degree. He was curing people, but he realized it was the country that needing curing. He needed to cure the country and the corrupted government in order to cure the people. He wanted to pursue his ideology to revive and modernize China, advocate for education and gender equality. He fought in the revolution for a long period of time. I look up to him because he just never stopped fighting.

What advice would you give to your first-year self?

I wish I took more studio art classes. I wish I had taken advantage of having so much free time and joined more clubs, or was more active on campus, or taken really different classes. But I wish I discovered art earlier!

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• anthropology
• studio art