Cindy Li ’18 knows how to accept a compliment. Her immediate response to learning of her nomination for this issue was to put her hands under her chin. You know the pose.
Li’s nominator praised her contagious bubbliness. In line for KAF, her smile is infectious, and she orders two drinks — one for her, one for a friend.
Although she is wearing a Dartmouth Figure Skating hoodie, she isn’t on the team anymore. After skating for most of her childhood, she decided to leave the team after her first year at Dartmouth to pursue other activities. With a schedule like hers, who could blame her.
Li also joined the dance group Fusion during her freshman year. While she hadn’t really danced before joining, she’s still a member today. As a a mentor for DREAM, Li builds connections with children who live in government-subsidized housing. She’s also involved in biological research at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where she goes four days a week. To top it all off, she’s also an undergraduate advisor in the Fahey-McLane cluster.
Despite her many commitments on campus, she also finds time to get away. Li fondly recounted her experiences during the Spanish LSA+ program in Santander, Spain during the summer after her freshman year. Some highlights included taking field trips to other nearby cities in Spain, the luxury to lounge by the beach before and after class and hitting the late night club scene.
A typical night, on the streets of Spain? “The clubs don’t open until 3:00 in the morning, and then you’re there until 6:30. Then you go to the beach again, and then you go home at 8:00 a.m., except sometimes you have to go to class.”
After her program ended, she even went to Morocco to visit some of the Dartmouth students on a different LSA program before heading home.
During her freshman and sophomore years, Li would make a huge effort to catch meals with as many people as she could. She was “that person who had all of their meals planned out for the next two weeks.” When a friend would ask her to get a meal together, she would have to check her calendar to see when her next available time slot was. Her friends would make fun of her for trying too hard.
Li emphasized that her super structured mealtime days are now over, and it’s relaxing for her to be able to just ask a friend to get a meal at any moment.
