This November my chapter collaborated with other Her Campus chapters for a Thanksgiving Theme Week where we met Her Campus writers from across the country. I had the opportunity to talk with a fellow Her Campus writer, José Gonzalez-Drescher. José is a third-year student at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus. In addition to writing for HerCampus, José is also a student-athlete for the university and a social media manager for a local Puerto Rican fashion designer and works on a creative team for San Juan Moda, Puerto Rico’s version of New York Fashion Week. Obviously, José likes to keep busy and told me all about his plans to go to grad school either in New York, where his mother is from, or in Barcelona, which has a publicity degree that he is very passionate about. José would love to be a creative director or editor for a magazine one day, and from what I could tell from our conversation, he would fit that role perfectly.
José’s favorite categories to write under for Her Campus are Lifestyle, Sex & Relationships, and Wellness. He enjoys incorporating his campus’s culture into his articles and says that some of his article ideas have come from conversations with other students between classes, or even just from observing the people around him.
“I like to try to be the main character,” José jokes, “I like to go into Starbucks, order a drink, and sit down, listen to Taylor Swift, and write an article.”
As a journalism major, José has had lots of experience writing articles, but what he likes most about HerCampus is that he can express his own voice and experiences. “Academic essays steal your writing voice,” he says, and I completely agree. We discovered we have a shared passion for creative writing and drawing from our personal experiences when writing articles, rather than writing hard news
José is looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with his family and eating his favorite Thanksgiving dish, the tres leches cake that his grandparents make once a year on the holiday. Every year José and his family have different roles in preparing Thanksgiving dinner, and he told me that whoever is in charge of cooking the turkey is the person whom his mother feels didn’t “pull their weight” that year. José got the turkey last year, but he is determined not to get it again! When I told José about my Thanksgiving plans at my family’s home in Northern Michigan, he said that he would love to spend Thanksgiving in a northern state like Michigan someday to have the “full Thanksgiving experience” of the changing and falling leaves and the cold weather. He hopes to visit his friends in Michigan soon.
Being able to converse with a fellow HerCampus contributor who lives and studies across the country has been an amazing experience, and I greatly appreciated getting to hear about José’s life at UPR and his writing advice.
Check out some of José’s articles here: