Chelsea Dias

COL ’14
Age: 21
Hometown: Edison, N.J.
Major: Government and Economics

Tell me a little bit about your hometown. How different is it from Georgetown?
My hometown is about 100,000 people so that’s huge and it is very racially diverse. The Asian population is like 50-60 percent, which is a lot different from Georgetown. But at the same time Georgetown has introduced me to … I guess at home it was all like one culture but here there is even more cultural diversity if that makes any sense. It’s a very tight-knit community but it’s still large, which I like — this is home.

What are some of the things you do on campus?
I’m very involved in the IRC. Sat on senior staff for NCSC and for NAIMUN. NCSC is the college conference in the fall and NAIMUN is the high school version in the Spring for some time I worked for Jumpstart Georgetown and that’s about it.

Where would you say you feel the most comfortable at Georgetown?
It would be a combination of two groups of people. I told you I was on the senior staff of NAIMUN — at those meetings I just felt most like myself. There were different groups of people for both conferences but they were people who I got to know really well over the course of the year and they’re the people that I’m going to miss the most after Georgetown.

What is the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
I actually transferred to Georgetown from Rutgers. Thus far it’s been the hardest thing I’ve done because moving in as a sophomore when everyone already has their friend groups there and initially all my friends were transfers, which made it even more difficult to immerse myself.

What is one thing you wish you could change about yourself?
I tend to compare myself to other people a lot and if I could change that … especially now with graduation, it’s really easy to compare yourself to everyone. If I could change one thing about myself it would definitely be that.

What’s a change you think you consciously made?
I think I’ve become more independent. In high school I’d depend a lot on my friends and my family for everything. Even in my freshman year at Rutgers, I was so close to home that everything was accessible but I think I’ve made the conscious decision to be more independent and more in control.

Do you feel obligated to be busy at Georgetown?
Yes. I think so. Especially now since NAIMUN ended, I haven’t really been doing anything; it’s just been classes. It’s weirdly refreshing to have “me time” all the time and to get to do things on my own terms. I like it. I didn’t realize how much pressure I was feeling to be busy all the time but it’s still sometimes hard because if you try to hangout with people, they’ll be like “I’m busy doing X, Y and Z.” So yeah I think there is pressure to be busy at Georgetown.

What’s your greatest fear?
My greatest fear is failure or like not knowing … I guess my greatest fear is not knowing what happens next, and I know that sounds really vague but especially now that we’re graduating. Teach for America, that’s great, but I have no idea what comes after that. So I’m afraid of the unknown.

If you could protest one thing what would it be?
If I could protest one thing, it would be the wage gap. … We’re about to start working the idea that people with the same exact degree and same job get paid differently just based on gender. I’m in a bunch of gender studies classes and something else that’s really dear to me is paid parental leave and how the U.S. is one of the only countries that doesn’t allow that at all. So I think the wage gap goes hand in hand with that. It’s more of a cause that people are protesting for rather than paid parental leave.

Which television character or fictional character in a book or movie do you see yourself most in? It could be someone you aspire to.
I really admire Olivia Pope on “Scandal.” She’s pretty independent. She doesn’t care about what people say or think about her, she speaks her mind and gets the job done so I guess I want to be her.

Interview by Hanaa Khadraoui