Mariah Marshall
 
California native Mariah Marshall did her homework when deciding where to attend college.

She knew it had to have her major. She wanted to live in a big city. She wanted to experience a different part of the country. She also wanted to be part of a sorority.

So when all was said and done, she had narrowed her choice down to one: the University of Houston.

"UH popped up on my radar and I applied and I got in," she said. "So I took a leap of faith and came here."

Marshall has been a student worker/marketing assistant in Auxiliary Services since October. In her role, she does a variety of different work, from typing up spreadsheets, creating slides and helping out with various events, including the recent Sustainability Fest. She works directly under Maria Honey, the assistant director of marketing and communications for Auxiliary Services and Student Housing & Residential Life.

"This job is really a lot of fun," said Marshall, a sophomore majoring in communications-public relations. "I'm never doing the same thing. It's always something different."

Prior to this student worker position, she was a desk assistant for Student Housing and Residential Life, working the front desk for the main housing office. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and serves as the recording secretary for her chapter. She and other sorority members volunteer a lot of their time. One of their favorite places is the Houston Food Bank, where they spend several hours on a Saturday helping to sort, inspect and box food donations.

She hopes to graduate in the fall of 2015, after which she would like to attend graduate school and earn a master's degree. But her career goals are not yet narrowed down, so she's also considering the possibility of getting a law degree.

"I'm slowly narrowing it down," she said. "Sometimes I see myself as a corporate lawyer, but I also like writing, so sometimes I see myself as an editor."

In high school, she played soccer her freshman year, then switched to the swim team the next three years. She is also an avid reader and a writer who has written two short stories for the fun of it.

"It's one of those things that I do in my spare time," she said.

As a native of Brentwood, Calif., which is about 30 minutes outside of San Francisco, people tend to think she's experienced plenty of earthquakes. That just hasn't been the case. Of the ones Marshall has gone through, they've been minor.

"We've just had small little shakes and sometimes you don't even really realize you are in an earthquake until afterward," she said.