"别怕跟别人想得不一样，抓住每个遇到的机会."

Our student for the month for the incoming New Year 2009 is Ms. Kelsey Hipp. Kelsey is a major in Interdisciplinary Studies with special interests in modern Chinese literature and culture. She exemplifies what a student in the College of Arts and Sciences should aim for in creating a path to one’s career goals through exceptional activities and experiences needed to solidify them: academic excellence, perseverance and courage in facing the unknown, expanding social and historical awareness, and as the quote from her above in Chinese states, a willingness to “not be afraid to think out of the box and take every opportunity available to you”.

Kelsey certainly epitomizes success in fulfilling those aims. She has twice had the opportunity to travel to China to study and to assimilate a vast new continent of information and ideas. She has involved herself in creating and sustaining the USC Chinese Literature and Culture Club, co-organizing a Chinese film festival, being the student representative to the newly created Confucius Institute in the College, and undertaking undergraduate research in China through the Magellan Scholars program at the University.

She has not been alone in developing and fulfilling her goals. She has been helped greatly along the way by Drs. Krista Van Fleit Hang and Guo Jie in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, both of whom have been extremely influential in Kelsey’s academic and personal growth in understanding Chinese history, culture and literature. Dr. Hang is her advisor and mentor, and in the tradition of all true mentors has inspired and challenged her to be critical of existing academic work and opinion in her field. She has also had the support of her mother and father, Tim and Sherry Hipp, who have seen her grow and mature in her view of the world and her sense of place in it.

Some of the many significant experiences Kelsey has had in college have been associated with study abroad. She was in China in 2006 and 2008 to learn languages and a cultural context for modern Chinese literature, but personally the most enduring memories she has are associated with the region surrounding Wenchuan in western China, where a devastating earthquake in 2008 killed thousands and demolished homes and schools just days before she arrived. The aftershocks of this quake were strong and relentless, and affected a wide area of the region including the city of Chengdu, where Kelsey was studying from May to August of that year. She, like nearly everyone else in that city of 12 million, slept outside on the streets because the tall apartment buildings were not considered safe enough to survive another monstrous quake that most certainly would collapse them. Even under these extreme conditions, there was little or no violence or crime. She had opportunities to leave and return to the US, but stuck with it and continued to live and learn the language and social structure of her guest country, persevering under the most dangerous of conditions to thrive and grow intellectually and personally.

Kelsey is set to graduate this spring and begin the next stage in her journey. Her heart is in China, where she will return after graduation and plans to live for the next few years, advancing her language skills, her critical interpretation of modern Chinese literature and preparing herself for graduate school and for what she envisions will be a career in academe. We are glad that the first steps of that journey started here in the College of Arts and Sciences and are proud to name her our student of the month for January 2009.

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