“The world is so big, their experiences will broaden your horizon”
From genetics to German, it’s crazy the multitudes of majors that are in our LAS department. Having so many people with so many backgrounds and so many interests, it’s hard to feel like anything more than a drop in the bucket. However, to your friendly neighborhood career services department, you are the whole entire bucket! Or like, some better analogy where people aren’t buckets.
Zhetian (Jessica) Li is not the typical Iowa farm girl you might see on the ISU campus. She is from Lanzhou, China and is studying here for her undergrad degree in computer science (and here I was thinking moving all the way from Illinois to ISU was quite an adjustment, so I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jessica). With only two years of schooling behind her, Jessica snagged a great internship over this past summer at Workiva working as a test engineer, and when school started up again, her internship didn’t stop. She now works part-time as she continues towards her degree.
Jessica was not afraid to get out of her comfort zone, and this attitude helped her when she was searching for a job. She was determined to set herself up for success, and utilized every opportunity she could to maximize her potential. She attended workshops to build her LinkedIn profile and her resume, and she attended the career fair where she connected with Workiva and ultimately landed her internship.
Iowa is not exactly known for being the multicultural hub of the world, but for Jessica it was a whole new environment and culture. When she arrived here she was determined to get an immersive experience, so she joined clubs and made an effort to get to know people from different cultures and backgrounds. Jessica found that “the world is so big, (and) their (multicultural) experiences will broaden your horizon.”
Even in our tiny sliver of the planet, we can become more worldly people. We have a big international student population on our campus, and the opportunities are endless—just say hi! For Jessica, it helped her professionally as well as personally throughout her experience at ISU.
