Give me a Moment
By: Erin Peterson, Photos by: Kaylinn Gilstrap, Illustrations by: Charlie Layton | Categories: Alumni Interest
Georgia Tech students are busier than most. Brainy and driven, they often pack their schedules full with courses, extracurriculars, and side projects. Every minute matters. (You probably know exactly what we mean.)
And for many students, certain moments in their day carry greater weight than others. These moments are the inflection points that not only represent where these students are at a single point in time, but speak to their most important values and future aspirations.
Below, we step into the shoes of six students during those critical junctures. They share with us where they are, what they're doing, and how they feel.
We hope these snapshots remind you of your own years at Tech—whether it was the joy of finding work that would drive you for a lifetime, the endless possibility that those years represented, or simply the nose-to-the-grindstone hustle that drives nearly every student on Tech’s campus.
David Curry - 7:50 a.m.
What happens at 7:50?
That’s when I have to be in the weight room on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We’re expected to show up no later than 10 minutes early to our 8 a.m. session.
Do you just roll out of bed and go?
No. I have to wake up in time to eat, stretch, and get in the hot tub before my workout. That means my alarm goes off at 6 a.m.
Do you hit snooze?
No. My alarm goes off, I get up.
That wakeup must be hard to be a Night Owl.
I’m in bed before 9:30. I can’t be going to bed at 11 or 12 at night. It’s not sustainable. I have to get at least eight hours of sleep.
After your alarm goes off, then what?
I get dressed, and by 6:15, I’m making breakfast. Eight whole eggs, a cup of oats, peanut butter, protein powder. A banana. Some blueberries.
An athlete's day seems quite regimented.
Yes. In some ways, I’m getting a bachelor’s degree in school and a bachelor’s in football. I have the workouts, and I set aside extra time to watch game footage, things like that. And like most college students find out, it’s not enough to just show up to the lecture and take notes, like it might have been in high school. You’ve got to learn to separate your time and go over those notes again.
It's a lot to fit in.
Yeah, I think my day looks different from most students’ days. But I love starting this way—getting up, breakfast, and then a great workout, all before I start my classes. Even after that, I still have to fit in watching game footage, classes, and going over my schoolwork. But the busier my day is, the more rewarding it feels to get to the end of it. You start with the momentum, then you keep it going.
Do you ever wish you could start your day later?
Later than 6 a.m.? Well, it’s not that bad. I used to have a 5:30 workout time. On those days, I had to get up at 4.
Kate Benson - 8:30 a.m.
Inside one of the Center’s satellite office buildings, known as Kirbo, Benson sits in what once was the receptionist’s area. Her desk, decorated with a welcome note from colleagues and a container of bubbles, sits just in front of shelves filled with books written by the former president and brochures detailing the work of the Center.
The cube-filled office space—though modest by nearly any standard—is one of the most joyful places she’s been, says Benson. “Anytime anyone walks in, I see them and get to say good morning and smile,” she says. “And without fail, they say hello and smile back. Everyone seems like they genuinely want to be here.”
As a development intern, Benson spends much of her time learning from gift officers or helping plan events. She finds ways to share the impact of The Carter Center’s work, from supporting human rights initiatives for women and girls around the world to eradicating the devastating Guinea worm disease.
For Benson, these early mornings represent a key step forward in a dream she’s had since 2013. While she was an undergraduate student at Georgia College & State University, a mentor who was on the Center’s Board of Councilors took her to a meeting. Benson was captivated by the scope and scale of the Center’s work and was determined to find a way to get involved in the organization. When she arrived at Tech, she continued to hold tightly to that goal. With the support of her family, friends, and Tech faculty, she applied for and got the internship.
Within weeks of joining The Carter Center, she felt confident that she had found a path she could travel for years. “I knew I wanted to intern here, but I didn’t know if I’d want to do this work,” she says. “Now, I’m 100 percent certain that’s my goal.”
Anna Romanov - 3:00 p.m.
My favorite moment is when I'm starting a new experiment.
Usually, that’s in the afternoons after my classes are done, but sometimes I’ll start on a Saturday morning and go from early in the morning, like 8 or 9 a.m., until later at night.
When I’m about to start, I’ll be in the lab. All of my reagents are lined up and all of my handwritten notes are in front of me. I might be formulating nanoparticles, working with cells, or treating mice.
Whatever the case, I take a deep breath and try to go through everything I have coming up over the next few hours in my head before I actually do it: What’s my hypothesis? What results should I expect? What are the potential problems I might run into?
A lot of experiments take a few days to see whether or not they worked. If I’m working on a mouse study, it might be a month or more, but the moment that I am ready to get started, that’s when I feel the shift.
I’m always very curious to see if something will work, and if it does, that’s awesome. But even if it doesn’t, it allows me to ask new scientific questions. I’ll write that down, too. Is it hard to stay motivated?
Not really. Nobody is forcing me to do this. I have the freedom to plan experiments out myself. I plan to pursue a PhD program so I can continue to do biomedical research.
Josephina Obi - 9:30 p.m.
At the end of the day, I brush my teeth in my apartment here in Santo Domingo. I’m staying here in the capital city while I work as a teaching assistant. I work with students in grades three, four, and five on English and social studies.
I live in a small apartment near a busy intersection. There are always cars honking and people yelling. But when I’m standing in my very small bathroom by the sink, it’s quiet. Just me in front of my mirror.
In my head, I go through the list of things that I had to do that day. I ask myself, “What did I actually do? How well do I think that I did it?” If I didn’t finish a task that day, I ask myself, “How can I do it tomorrow?”
On not-so-good days, I say to myself: “Who did you help today, specifically?” I try to think of the individual students that I’ve helped during the day, even if it’s as small as teaching someone what a pronoun is.
Even saying, “Hi, how are you doing today?” to students can be enough. I know I definitely needed that when I was in high school.
This is my moment to relax, reflect, and say, “Okay, you deserve this.”
I’m pretty scheduled and very methodical. I try to think of everything ahead of time. My goal, once I graduate, is to become an educator—a professor. I want to be a person who can reflect and find ways to help.
Anushk Mittal - 11:00 p.m.
What happens at 11 P.M.?
Well, my last class is on Friday afternoon. When it ends, I know I don’t have any specific obligation for the rest of the weekend and I can do what I want to. And that’s when I think to myself: “Back to grinding.” It’s a good kind of grinding!
After class, I go back to my apartment and get out of my school mindset and into the working mood. I talk on the phone with my teammates, I have some food, I think about what I need to get done over the weekend to stay on track and make progress.
I like that work. But I’m an inventor. I like having solitude—just me and my computer, where I can focus on the problem at hand for hours if I need to. Sometimes I work in my apartment, sometimes I get bored and go to the library.
I’m also a night owl. On Friday nights I know I don’t have to do anything else except for the work. When I start, I can go straight through for hours.
Homer McEwen - 1:00 a.m.
My life? It can be crazy. It's all about finding balance.
When I spend time with my boys, that’s exciting. When I see my wife after work, that’s exciting, too. My family is the most important thing to me.
There’s also a moment at night, after I lie down in bed, quiet, and I’m still thinking about a problem for my classes or from work. It’s almost meditative.
It happens when I’ve been researching and contemplating a complex problem. I’ve gone into a maze and bumped into every wall. My wife will tell me she can tell when I’m struggling with a project—I’m obsessing, I’m quiet. That can feel very frustrating to me. I ask myself, “Can I really do this?”
But when I lie down, it’s like I’m seeing the maze from afar. I can see the right direction. So many answers come to me then. I’ll think: “What if I use this “OR” statement or this “AND” statement?” I’ll find a way to resolve the problem.
It just happened this week! And when it does, I might run downstairs with the solution in my head and code it before I forget. That moment of clarity is an amazing feeling. It keeps me challenged and eager for what’s next.
See more of McEwen’s work at youtube.com/user/playmore3 and https://twitter.com/KillaDBA
