Year: 3 out of 5
Major: Finance
Campus Involvement: Personnel Chair of the Chi Omega Fraternity, Vice Chair of the elections facilitation committee (EFC), VP of Recruitment for Lindner Ambassadors
Fun Fact: Abraham Lincoln is my seventh cousin, I totally look like him too, beard and all.
Her Campus Cincinnati: Where in your various campus involvement do you feel most passionate? And what about that organization/position drives that passion for you?
Hannah Duckworth: So I actually think it’s a tie between the Elections Facilitation Committee (EFC) and being Personnel Chair (PC) in Chi Omega. I’ll start with personnel, because I might complain about it a lot but first of all, I firmly believe female friendship makes the world go round. So that’s why I stay in Chi Omega, that’s why I joined, and that’s why I’m so attached to my female friends. Being personnel chair has allowed me to be the support that sometimes women don’t feel from other women. As much as female friendship makes the world go round, I think that females tearing down other females stops the world from spinning a little bit. Nothing hurts more than a fellow female tearing you down. So as PC, I have the ability to reverse that a little bit and the ability to put into action my tendency for empathy, and be consciously empathetic. If they come to me with stories of sexual assault, abuse, financial instabilities, or anything like that, I am able to be that support system and give them the love they’re maybe not feeling in that moment.
As for EFC, I’m incredibly passionate about civic engagement; I want everyone to vote, I want everyone to be involved in everything, and I want everyone to pay attention. And EFC allows me to do this on a micro scale on campus. I create content, push campaigns, and I try to get the student body involved in the body that’s making the decisions for them, or advocating on their behalf. I want every single person on this campus to have a say. I think that’s why I’ve loved EFC so much from the beginning, because that’s taking back the power and giving it to the students. It’s a body dedicated dedicated to making student government fair and for the students rather than just for the senator sitting in the room.
HCC: What do you do outside of your campus involvement?
HD: I have 2 jobs. The only thing I do that’s related to finance is real estate finance. I work full time at NA properties. I’m an intern but I pretty much do work year round. I also have a job doing marketing and social media for a startup downtown called Tablespoon Cooking Company.
HCC: What advice do you have for other students who are possibly afraid to go out of their comfort zones whether it’s in campus involvement or in their professional life?
HD: I have played to my strengths a little bit in my involvement and I think that’s really important; to play to your strengths, even if it might not be related to your major. Most of mine isn’t. I’m good at finance, but I’m a Lindner Ambassador, which allows me to refine my public speaking. I’m in EFC, which plays to my recreational passion of civic engagement and Personnel Chair has allowed me to be very compassionate and empathetic. So I don’t know if it’s so much as stepping out of your comfort zone, I think it’s if you’re shy or reserved and you’re scared to get involved because of the social aspect. I think stepping out of your comfort zone will make your college experience better in that case, but I really think it’s very important in your involvement to not step into someone else’s comfort zone.
What I mean by that is, there are a lot of very well known organizations on campus, and they’re very selective because they get so many applicants because it’s where everybody wants to be and I think that’s why people want to be involved. So I think it’s more than stepping out, it’s refusing to adopt somebody’s else’s comfort zone because that’s so easy to do. And honestly, your comfort zone might be where you strengths lie and you might want to build upon those. When it comes to your involvement really play to your strengths, recognize those, bolster those, refine those and it will take you a lot farther.
HCC: If you the world was listening, what would be your biggest message?
HD: Actually, can we go back to the last question?
HCC: Sure! That was; what advice do you have for other students who are possibly afraid to go out of their comfort zones whether it’s in campus involvement or in their professional life?
HD: Don’t give a f*ck what anybody else thinks. If you don’t want to get involved, don’t. Sometimes UC’s involvement culture is toxic and people think they need to put so much on their plate and stress themselves out because if they don’t get involved they’re not going to be important on campus or they’re not going to have anything on their resume or after college. If you don’t want to do something, don’t do it. If it is outside your comfort zone in the way that you’re literally like, “I don’t want to do this, I’m not scared of it, I just don’t want to do it,” then don’t do it. Don’t do it because the culture at UC is so involvement oriented, which is a great thing if you want to do those things. Do what you want to do. Because if you get out of college and you’re like, “Why did I spend four years in an organization where I hated everyone and and we never got anything done?”, then you’re going to feel like you wasted your time. But if you get involved with something you’re passionate about that you never want to quit, like how I never want to quit EFC (they’ll have to drag my dead body out of that room before I quit). If you find something like that, it’s so worth leaving other things to do what you want. It’s so worth it, because you figure out exactly what you’re passionate about. But if you don’t figure out what you’re passionate about through student involvement that’s okay too. Just don’t do things you don’t want to do. Unless it’s to graduate. Like if it’s homework, then do your homework.
HCC: Awesome. So you had the world’s ear for 60 seconds, what would your biggest message be?
HD: I have some top things. I think one of my things is we’re all here for an average of like 65 years. 65 years. Actually, I have no idea what the average is, I made that up. But if you think your gonna do something so important and change the world in those 65 years, go for it. But if you think you’re better than anyone else on this Earth who is also living out those 65 years, because they’re doing it in a different way than you, then you’re probably not. You don’t know if you’re gonna change the world, you don’t know if that person’s going to change the world. I don’t know where I’m going with this, but all I’m saying is that nothing in this life is so important that you need to be an as*h*le to somebody.
It gets caught up in the student involvement thing, like if someone isn’t doing their job as quickly as you want them to or in the exact way you want them to do it, there are ways to address it without talking behind peoples’ backs. There are literally no reasons to be an as*h*le. I wonder who the first person who was an as*h*le was, because they probably didn’t have a reason to be one. It’s just so easy to be nice to people. It’s so easy. Sometimes it’s not easy to love people, but most of the time it is. So just do it. Just love people.
Okay, another one, don’t be fake. I don’t mean in the way of being nice to someone’s face then talking sh*t about them. The kind of fake I’m talking about is pretending you like things you don’t for other people’s approval. If you’re a chick and you love the color pink, your blonde hair, and your barbies, and you want a pink cadillac and you only wear dresses and you want to do all the stereotypical girly things, do that, and do that unapologetically, so you inspire other people to do exactly what they want to do. If you love to do all those things, but now the world is telling you
“Oh you can’t like those things, those things aren’t what real femininity is,” that’s bull.
Real femininity exists on a spectrum. It goes from one end to the whole opposite other, and if you’re like me and you wanted to play football growing up and loved getting dirty then do it unapologetically. Don’t pretend to like barbies and stuff because that’s what people told you to like as a girl. And if you loved playing with barbies and loved dressing up, but you also loved football and getting dirty, that’s exactly what humanity is. So don’t like sh*t just because you’re supposed to like it. And don’t not like sh*t just because you’re not supposed to like it. If you like sh*tty pop music listen to it as loud as you can and sing every word, okay? I still think it’s sh*tty pop music but if you like it, it’s subjective, I don’t care. I just care that you’re happy.
One final message is that life is a game and nothing matters, except being nice to each other.
HCC: And that’s the message! Thanks for being real and candid with our readers, Hannah!