Amanda Cui (W ‘25) lives deliberately. From Humans of Penn and Dear Penn Freshmen to the Anti–Resume Project and various art installations on campus, Amanda channels her creativity into projects that humanize people through storytelling and demystify the culture of failing at Penn. As I trot down the stairs into Stommons for our interview, I scan the beleaguered faces of college students in the thick of midterm season who, upon making eye contact with me, resecure their headphones and bury their noses in their laptops. When I spot Amanda, however, curled up on one of the sunlit couches with a paint–splattered jean leg tucked under her, her face brightens, and she waves me over like an old friend.
Having a conversation with Amanda is more than just a series of exchanges; it’s engaging with her presence in every sense of the word. Grounded and thoughtful, Amanda indulges me with refreshing honesty about the environment she has engaged with and the community she has created during her time at Penn, supporting students and artists to pursue their passions through The Signal. Reflecting on her semester abroad and the relationships she has built, she notes both the ways she has changed Penn and how Penn has changed her, approaching the future with the same positivity and conviction she practices in the present.
Name: Amanda Cui
Hometown: Queens, N.Y.
Major: Finance with a minor in Cognitive Science
Activities: The Signal, Peer Advisor for Wharton Undergraduate Division, Venture Lab, Oracle Senior Honor Society
How did you get involved with The Signal? What is the organization about?
The whole thesis of The Signal is to promote living deliberately through passion projects that we create to support or to encourage students by demystifying a lot of the nuances of Penn culture. Specifically, failing at Penn. A lot of our projects, like Confessions on Locust or Anti–Resume Project, are about that. There’s also this annual project called Failure at Penn, where people come together and we literally talk about, like, oh, what does it mean to fail at this institution?
But we also do this event called Dear Penn Freshmen, which is a bunch of seniors that write letters to their freshman year selves and then they present them. During my freshman spring, I went, and I basically just sobbed the entire time because it's just a lot of seniors saying, “Oh, do this! Do that!” but as a freshman, you're just going through existential despair.
So, I found out about [The Signal] through Dear Penn Freshmen. It was founded in 2017, and a mentor that I had through a different club that I joined freshman year was actually the president at the time. She told me to come join the club, to be part of it. I joined my sophomore fall, and I ended up founding Humans of Penn. Now, I'm the co–director of The Signal.
Could you talk a little more about the kinds of projects you’ve been involved in?
We currently have six active projects, but over the course of the years, there've been iterations of different projects. A couple of years ago, there was Squirrels Without Morality, a card game deck which is a take on Cards against Humanity, but Penn Edition. The six active ones right now are Confessions on Locust, Humans of Penn, Dear Penn Freshmen, Anti–Resume Project, Art Fair, and this year we're starting this initiative called Penn Through My Eyes.
I don't know if you’ve ever seen the LOVE sign with Post–it notes on it, but that's Confessions on Locust, and that’s run by The Signal. A lot of it is anonymous reporting, like answering questions, but in one–word answers or short–form responses, so there are a lot of respondents. I believe one of them was, “What's one thing that you regret?” We do a lot of active art installations like that.
Humans of Penn is the project I started two years ago. Our thesis is literally to humanize people at Penn. I think I've always gravitated towards stories; I grew up doing a lot of activism, a lot of social justice work, with storytelling. When I came to Penn, when I was a sophomore, I realized I didn't really know people on campus, and it's really hard to get to know people if you're not already part of an organization, if you don't already know them. I thought, what better way to get to know people than to just walk up to someone and ask about their life? I started doing that my sophomore spring. Originally, it was literally an excuse for me to get to know people on campus, but it ended up highlighting different nuances at Penn. Now, it's a project that will continue doing that, but with specific focuses. Last semester, it was in collaboration with Dear Penn Freshmen; we interviewed seniors specifically and got their stories.
Anti–Resume Project is a collection of people's anti–resumes: all the failures they've had. Ten bombed interviews, nine rejected phone calls, eight times that I XYZ’d, seven clubs that I got rejected from—the flip end of what you would submit to a company. Last year, we collected like 40 responses. We do it every year but this year, we're trying to reformat it and switch it all over to one platform.
The other project we have is Art Fair, which is a way for us to promote students who create art on campus. We literally just set up booths for people to sell their stickers or creations; that one's very chill.
Do you know the TikTok trend where someone gives someone else a disposable and then they take pictures of their night? We’re doing that on Penn’s campus! We haven't started it yet, but we're going to pass out disposable cameras and hope no one steals them, so when they return to us, we can develop the pictures. It would be called Penn Through My Eyes, and it would showcase what Penn culture looks like through very different pockets of Penn! Hopefully it works out.
The Signal promotes failure at Penn, but what is something you are proudest of?
I think I'm finding my roots here.
I went abroad last semester to Singapore, and when I came back, I think I was really scared—it was like that feeling when someone finds out they’re dying and they're like, “Oh my God, I've made no impact on the world.” I had that moment during my first week back here where I thought, “Oh my gosh, I'm going to leave Penn and not have made any impact, or not have done anything to actually change the environment.”
But I think as the month has progressed, as I’m situating myself more, I'm realizing I've made an impact on people, whether it be personally, or through an organization, or just through interpersonal mentorship relationships. I've actually made quite an impact on people who look up to me, and people that I look up to, and my friends who I live with.
I'm really proud of the relationships that I've built here. I was thinking about them a lot the past couple of days. I think it's hitting me that I'm a senior now, and I'm never going to have this experience ever again. The concept of missing someone, or something, is such a privilege to have because you love them so much that you have this pang of sadness, which isn't necessarily a bad feeling, but more of a gratifying feeling. Going abroad and coming back and having those feelings is very epitomizing—that wow, I've made my Penn experience so worthy of being this scared to leave.
Where on campus have you found the best sense of community?
I should say The Signal because I'm sort of the president of it, but honestly, it’s my roommates. I have three, and I've been roommates with all of them since sophomore year. We've seen each other grow, and we’ve built traditions. I think my three roommates have been very fundamental in grounding me at Penn; now, when I think about Penn, I think about home.
But organization–wise, I have to say The Signal. You don't really get a career benefit out of joining; there's nothing about it that's going to help you the way pre–professional clubs or even journalism clubs might. The Signal is very much like, if you care, you do it. The time you put in is literally just because you care. It attracts a very unique group of people, and it's always shape–shifting and reforming itself based off who joins, which means that it's very person–led, people–led. I think sometimes organizations miss that; they're focused more on regimen or routine, and they miss out on realizing that it's the people that make an organization rather than the organization that defines the people. I think The Signal works because people choose the projects and lead them. They define what the club is.
What was your most influential academic experience at Penn?
When I studied abroad in Singapore, I took this course called Cities for All. I thought, if I'm in Singapore, I have to take an urban planning course because they're known for their city planning. If you know anything about Singapore, you know it's a very clean city, very livable, very equitable. Very government–run, but the size of the entire country is smaller than the size of New York City, so obviously it's a lot more easy to manage. The course was centered around the question: How do you make a city livable for all of its residents?
I worked with Singaporeans to interview community residents and identify the biggest problems that they were facing, and we ended up talking a lot about the elderly and community access. It really exposed me to what a livable city would look like. I grew up in New York City, and I go to school in Philadelphia, so there's a lot of inequity and it's very apparent. Now, I'm writing a thesis paper, which people don’t really do as a senior, but it’s really exciting. I’m exploring urban Singapore and Philadelphia's urban fiscal policy, specifically how we can do more community–centric urban renewal projects, like Mural Arts Philadelphia. I really want to look deeper into that, because I used to do a lot of art advocacy in high school, identifying how that could make a city “livable.”
You mentioned that one of the missions of The Signal is to demystify “Penn culture.” How would you personally describe it?
It's very cliche, but I think Penn is very work hard, play hard, and I think I also fell into that pitfall.
In the past, I joined a bunch of consulting clubs and Greek life organizations. I think I had a taste of a lot of parts of Penn just based off the organizations that I was once a part of. As a result, I've seen a lot of disparate parts of Penn, but the majority of the organizations and the places that I've been able to be a part of have been very much of that mentality: You work really, really, really hard so that you can play really, really hard.
I don't know if I love that mentality, but I would say it defines a lot of Penn’s culture. I don't think there's much balance here, which is something I'm trying to integrate into my own personal life.
But I'm trying to be more optimistic—I think anywhere you go, mentality is what shapes your view of the world. If you're negative, obviously it will suck, yeah? If you're more optimistic, that will make things a little better, and I do love Penn. I really love Penn.
If you could go back and tell your freshman self anything right now, what would you say?
Have you ever heard the pistachio ice cream quote? It's like, “Don't yuck it till you try it.” Whenever people think about pistachio ice cream, they're like, “That's disgusting.”
[What? I love pistachio ice cream.]
Or at least, most people. I don’t like pistachio ice cream, but I figured that out after I tried it. I think my advice to my freshman year self is to not yuck anything till I try it. What year are you?
[I’m a freshman.]
You're a freshman! You have so much … You have so much ahead of you.
I was very different as a freshman. I used to be very abrasive and harsh, and I had a really strong stance on everything. I think that was a product of being from New York City, trying to find my ground and just being very insecure as someone coming into Penn. I would always shit on things that I didn't necessarily know much about. Now that I'm a senior, I think to myself, “Oh, I wish I had done this more. I wish I'd been more open to trying clubs that people didn't necessarily hold in high regard but were actually great clubs.” You know, trying things that I actually cared about versus what everyone else cared about. I think that's hard to actually practice; it's easier said than done in hindsight, but that's something that I would advise my freshman year self to do. Do things you actually want to do, not just things that you think will put you a step forward, if that makes sense.
You’ve talked about the past, and you seem grounded in the present. So what's next for you after Penn?
I just applied to Fulbright! It’s a program where I'd teach students in Taiwan, which is not expected of me. I study finance, I did finance for the past three summers, I've been working in a finance consulting role, and I'm doing consulting full time. But after a semester abroad and after working over the summer, I realized I’ve kind of been on a hamster wheel for a very long time, especially at Penn, which ties back to the advice I would give myself. I came into Penn as a sociology major, and now I'm very different. I applied to Fulbright because I really love teaching, advocacy, and community work. That's a lot of what I did in high school.
Hopefully I get that, and if I do, then I'll do that. If not, I'll do consulting, but I'm trying to do that in the social impact space, like government work, or luxury fashion. Two very different paths, but wherever I end up, I know I will care. I know I will love it, and it's going to be very human–centric. I want to work with people, and I love working with people, and I love meeting people and hearing their stories. That's what drives my curiosity.
Lightning Round
Hottest take: I don’t like the inside of Oreos. I eat the outside only, and I scrape off the cream.
Favorite thing to do in Philly: The farmer's market at Clark Park. I’ve been every Saturday since I’ve gotten back. It’s so great—it expands every week. And cafes. I like walking to cafes.
Favorite cafes in Philly: Knockbox in West Philly; Green Line is underrated too.
Comfort food: Air–fried dumplings.
Last song you listened to: “A Letter from The Pale Blue Dot” by 吳獻 Osean.
There are two types of people at Penn… Those who live intentionally and those who don’t.
And you are? I live intentionally.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Do you know that one senior who brings a smile to everyone’s face or always has the craaaaziest stories? It’s time to give them the recognition they deserve. Ego of the Week seeks to showcase seniors not for their grades or any other fake academic construct, but for who they are as a person and the joy they bring to the people around them! Nominate your favorite Penn Seniors for Ego of the Week!
