Overcoming Challenges
Five ETSU students overcame significant challenges in their college journeys -- and learned not just how to survive, but thrive. With encouragement from ETSU faculty, staff, and friends, they discovered inner strength and direction they didn't realize were possible.
With guidance from the ETSU Research Corporation's StoryCollab team, these incredible students created videos to share their powerful stories.
Click on each student's photo below to watch their story unfold.
"I’m looking at possible internships, and post-grad jobs, considering hopes and dreams
I hadn’t thought about since I was a kid … and some new ones, too. Maybe my ETSU mentor
was right, after all. Maybe I can do more than survive. Maybe I can thrive, too.”
“Now, in my senior year, studying the health of my community both here and abroad, this is my passion. Before my mom even has a chance to ask, I say, ‘You want to know something really cool I learned today?’”
“When I graduated, I never thought I’d set foot in a high school again. But by the end of my freshman year, all I could think about was teaching. I could see myself in front of a classroom, educating, affirming, and really seeing each student, both for who they were then, and who they could become.”
“I loved the behind-the-scenes in movies....I knew I wanted to learn how to make films, and stop worrying about the things I couldn’t control, like the way other people saw me, or my past. So when it was time for me to go to college, I was ready to get out of Memphis. I saw myself doing more, beating the stereotype, doing important things in life. I wanted to figure out who Greg was.”
“Later that summer, my parents told me I’d changed. I wasn’t the same little girl who’d moved away. And I wasn’t. I came back with an A from a tough but fair English professor at ETSU, friends who told me my ideas were worth it, and, later that fall, a new plant.”
Learn more about StoryCollab here.
Read more incredible stories in the Summer 2024 Edition of ETSU Today. #BucsGoBeyond
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