Shima Dadashzadeh (pronounced duh-DOSH-zuh-deh) not only has one of the coolest names to say, but is also one of the all-around coolest people at SCU.
Well on her way to becoming Doctor Dadashzadeh, Shima double-majors in Public Health Science and Biology. She dreams of going to medical school and becoming a pediatrician, and I am 100% going to make sure that she treats my kids one day. As if she wasn’t busy enough killing it in her academics, she is also a Public Health Student Assistant, a Stanford Research Intern, and a Community Facilitator in Casa Italiana. When asked how she finds time for it all, she says “I try to keep my life balanced as much possible which means I stay focused on my work while I’m working and I make time to see friends so I don’t get burned out.” She works hard and has a good system for organizing her time, but her schedule has admittedly turned her into a low-key coffee addict. More than anything she’s a big fan of the work-hard, play-hard mentality. In other words, she took two midterms and then immediately hopped on a flight to Vegas last week (honestly, name something more iconic).
As a CF, she is committed to helping the community become a better place for everyone. Often found studying in the Casa den, she is available to support her residents and friends, and even people whom she’s never met before. Last Christmas she and another CF, Veronica Ribeiro, got together to sell a whole cart of baked goods and raise over $300 for the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital toy drive. Shima spreads joy to all of the kids receiving treatments in the hospital, and is just generally an angel of a human being.
Want to hear another impressive fact about Shima? Cool, because there’s a million of them, including the fact that she speaks three languages: English, Farsi, and Spanish. Shima was actually born in Iran and lived there until she was five. She and her parents moved to Sunnyvale, CA in 2001, where she has lived ever since. Every few years, she goes back to Iran and she says her favorite thing about traveling there is seeing her family. Shima says, “It’s like making up for lost time when we see each other and picking up right where we left off after four years. It’s also nice to know where I’m from and keep in touch with that culture.” She loves that even though she and her cousins live on opposite sides of the world, they can still have similar experiences and get along really well.
Shima’s one piece of life advice as a wise, old senior is “In order to find our purpose in life you need to find that one thing that makes you stay up until four in the morning working on it. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you love it. Also, find the humor in everything because it just makes life so much better.”
Shima Dadashzadeh is a complete bad*ss for all that she has accomplished and all that she will surely accomplish in her future. What really sets her apart though on the list of extremely cool people at SCU is the fact that she is a great friend and overall great human being. Her advice about finding the humor in life is a testament to her character, as she is always finding a way to laugh through both fun and challenging times, and make others laugh along the way.