Name: Katherine Sherman
Major: Nutrition
Position: ASUCD Senator
Year: Second-year
1: What is one skill you wish you had cultivated when you were younger?
I was the third child in my family so when I was younger, I would definitely try and follow my brothers. So I think [although] I eventually learned to become a leader, if I had started earlier that would have been a great advantage. By getting involved in things and not just following my brothers, I eventually did that once they moved to college. In high school I was able to do that on my own; If I had started even earlier, it would have been so much better.
2: If you could live anywhere, where would you move to best serve your career interests?
I’m not too sure what I want to do with my career yet. So that’s kind of hard, but I’m from San Diego and I love it. So for right now I’m going to stick with San Diego. There’s a lot of culture there.
3: Do you have any pet peeves? How do you deal with them?
One, when people leave their blinkers on when they are not turning. I just want them to turn it off, because I don’t know what they are going to do and it really bugs me. There’s not much I can do about that but get angry in my own car. But that’s about it. My other one is when people talk with their mouths full. I understand if you just took a bite of food; chew it, swallow it and I’ll keep talking to you.
4: Is there a book or other piece of literature that you think every college student should read?
I honestly can’t answer that. I’m not a huge book person. I read for classes and I read for certain topics, but I don’t really read for pleasure.
5: What trait do you find most impressive in an individual?
When people can truly be honest, not just with others but also with themselves. I find that a lot times, people try and cover who they are because they want to fit a certain norm.
6: What is your favorite movie, and why it is your favorite?
My favorite movie for a very odd reason is Spy Kids, the really young kid movie, because my cousins were in it. So I was able to go to the red carpet. You have to love a movie that you were on the red carpet for.
7: How was your transition from high school to college? Did you face any challenges?
I faced a huge challenge. My graduating class was 37 kids, so to go from 37 to 5,000 in my grade alone was a huge transition. It took me a little bit; it took me a quarter to get on my feet. I found a core group of friends and we’ve kind of stuck together and that became my little family, from like high school almost. Then from there I webbed out and I expanded. The transition took at least a quarter to about the whole freshman year. I figured it out and we’re doing well now.
8: If you got to invite three people (dead or alive) over for dinner, whom would you choose?
It changes on a daily basis, which is the hard part. Today it would probably be Alton Brown, he is a TV show host. He was on a show called “Good Eats,” and I’m really into baking. I want to make my own bakery one day; it’s kind of my goal, so to sit and talk to him about his career [and any] tips he could give me would be amazing. I’d probably want to talk to Abraham Lincoln. Just because there are so many stories and rumors about him and that time period. I’d really like to know what he was thinking from his point of view. The third one … I’m going to say my mother. If I were having this experience, I’d want to share it with her.
9: How would you like to be remembered?
A tangible thing would be my bakery. I already have my name for it and I already have recipes. They’re all in my head and they’re not written down anywhere. I do a lot of baking in the kitchen with cakes, cupcakes and cookies. My brother does cake decorating, so we kind of want to do a family business where I bake it and he decorates it. It would be really cute, and he’d be a barista. If I could make that a franchise and make it really yummy — and make a healthier version of dessert — if that went on for years, I wouldn’t complain.
People don’t understand the science behind baking. If you put one ingredient before another, it completely changes the taste. Nobody really gets that. If the eggs are room temperature or if they are refrigerated, it can change the entire thing. It’s detailed enough where you can always change it, but it’s also simplistic enough where anyone can really do it. I’ve wanted to do it since I was five years old.
Name:Lauren Ashe
Major: American studies with minors in professional writing and textiles and clothing
Position: Outreach Assembly Speaker
Year: Third-year
1. What’s your most embarrassing fashion mistake?
I’d like to think I’ve never made any. Just to be conceited like that. I’m a textiles and clothing minor, so I’m really into clothing, I actually have an internship with a fashion website and have my own fashion blog, so fashion’s a really important part of my life, and I would like to think that I’ve never made a mistake, but I’m sure there are others who would disagree with me.
2. Favorite memory on the UC Davis campus?
That’s hard. I don’t think I have a specific favorite memory, but I have a like, favorite thing about UC Davis campus, is that good? Well, I really like all the trees we have on campus. I love being in the Arboretum and going on daily walks. My friend and I do weekly walks in the Arboretum where we just catch up with each other and talk about our life, and go and pet the horses, so that’s a lot of fun. So I guess that’s like a favorite memory, but it’s an ongoing activity.
3. What skills will your major give you, and how do you plan on applying those skills?
Well, I don’t know exactly what I want to do after I graduate but, I know I want to write and I guess my dream job would be a “fashion and lifestyle” blogger. American studies is a super interdisciplinary program, so you learn about a lot of different things. In my concentration, the major is actually like American fashion, with regards to women and their representation in the media, so that’s kind of what I want to do in my life. Hopefully, it will give me some good analysis and writing skills for my career, whatever I decide to do.
4. Scariest moment of your life?
It was in Washington D.C. a few summers ago. I was actually with my dad in the Smithsonian, in the American history side of it, and there was an earthquake in D.C. It was the first earthquake I’ve ever been in — strange, having been born and raised in California — and it was really scary because we thought it was a terrorist attack. You wouldn’t think there would be an earthquake in Washington D.C. and the ground started to shake, [and] because we were at the National Mall, all the guards started freaking out, and all these automatic gates were closing, and they had to hold them open and we were being forced to run out of the building. So that was probably the scariest moment of my life.
5. Favorite aspect of yourself?
That’s so hard. I think it’s so easy at 20 to hate everything about yourself, and not love yourself enough. Probably I guess my tenacity. I think when I’m stuck in a really bad situation, and everything seems to be going wrong, I’m good about fighting and going on.
6. What does YOLO mean to you personally?
I guess the meaning of YOLO is just to embrace every day and live it to its fullest — but, I don’t know. I think a lot of people are gonna start dying whenever they say YOLO, because I know whenever I make a really risky driving move I say YOLO. I could see people being like “YOLO, gonna drop off this dangerous height” and then dying from it, which is pretty ironic.
7. What is your favorite social media network?
I’m on a lot of different social media things, just to promote my blog because I’m nerdy like that, but I like Facebook because it’s interacting with people and forming new relationships. I also like Twitter. I think people use Twitter like a diary, and they share a lot of intimate things — I definitely do this myself — and people forget that other people are reading their Twitters. So you can learn a lot about them just from looking at their tweets. You can also follow celebrities, which I’m really into doing.
8. Historically speaking, which era of history is most appealing to you?
Probably the American Revolution, just because my parents are originally from New England, so growing up we went into Boston a lot. We did a lot of the Freedom Trail things where like “Oh, this is the church where Paul Revere rang the bell to say ‘the British are coming.’” You can see where Sam Adams is buried and cool things like that, so I think it was really impressionable growing up. My mom is from a small town in Massachusetts and they have a colonial part of the town, where you pay to go in, and all these people are dressed up in colonial New England [outfits], and they’re churning butter and living in these small houses and stuff. So that’s probably the most interesting time period for me.
9. Which Hogwarts house would you be sorted into?
I’ve actually never read Harry Potter. I watched all the movies, but they don’t really explain the houses that in-depth in the movies. I’ve taken a few of the quizzes online just because all your friends do it, so I have the fear of being left out, but it always says, I think, Hufflepuff? But I have no idea why I’d be in it because I’ve never read Harry Potter.
