{"id":109087,"date":"2020-05-04T11:20:51","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T15:20:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=109087"},"modified":"2022-03-24T16:36:57","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T20:36:57","slug":"living-out-a-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/living-out-a-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"From Myth to Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"
George Walters-Marrah \u201920<\/strong> has a little down time. He could binge One Piece<\/em> \u2014 he\u2019s on a second go-round of all 929 episodes of the Japanese animated series. But no, today he\u2019s in his apartment teaching himself math. Calculus and linear algebra, to be exact. He doesn\u2019t have<\/em> to do this.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I put my mind to something, I\u2019ll do whatever it takes to master it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n And that explains how he came to UCF as a first-generation university student, how he discovered something once-mysterious to him called research and has become so enamored with it that he\u2019s worked alongside Ivy Leaguers and world-respected scientists en route to a degree in molecular microbiology<\/a>. This fall, he\u2019ll start work on his doctorate at Stanford.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I put my mind to something, I\u2019ll do whatever it takes to master it.\u201d \u2014 George Walters-Marrah \u201920<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is the same young man who didn\u2019t even know what a GPA was until his senior year of high school.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother and grandmother stressed the importance of college,\u201d says Walters-Marrah, who grew up with an older sister, Rachel, and younger brother, Aaron, in Miami. \u201cMy mom just wasn\u2019t sure where she\u2019d get the resources to send us all to college.\u201d<\/p>\n Walters-Marrah had a scholarship offer to play soccer in the Northeast, but he didn\u2019t sense a good fit. Then a PE teacher pointed out his GPA, explained what it meant, and said, \u201cYou have opportunities, George.\u201d<\/p>\n That was all he needed to hear. Completing a four-year degree with limited debt became his new obsession.<\/p>\n Walters-Marrah can\u2019t tell you why he kept bothering his mother, Althea, for a microscope and telescope as a child. Despite limited finances, she gave in.<\/p>\n \u201cDo what interests you,\u201d she would say.<\/p>\n Although young Walters-Marrah couldn\u2019t see living cells or distant planets with the toy scopes, they did open his imagination. He also heard of these people called scientists.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know where they worked or if they were even real. To me, scientists were myths.\u201d He might never have known the truth had he not visited UCF with a high-school friend. Walters-Marrah liked what he saw and heard.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he gets to that point there\u2019s no denying him,\u201d says his mother. Some of Walters-Marrah\u2019s drive comes from his mother, who grew up on a farm in Jamaica, became a track star, and was the first member of her family to move to the United States. She put her own college aspirations aside while raising three kids, but would not let them put theirs aside (Rachel earned an associate degree from Miami Dade College and Aaron is currently enrolled there).<\/p>\n \u201cMom said I could go to UCF, but I\u2019d have to find ways to fund it,\u201d Walters-Marrah says.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all she had to say. First, Walters-Marrah earned a Silver Pegasus Scholarship as an incoming freshman. He had to grind through his first few weeks at UCF, listening intently to lectures and making note cards after class, whatever it took to keep his grades up. Then he walked into a lab for the first time. There, in the dark, he saw an object glowing and crawling under a microscope. Bacteria. He looked around and thought:<\/p>\n This is research. These are scientists. They aren\u2019t myths. They\u2019re real<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cI decided right then, \u2018This is what I want to do,\u2019 \u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom my first interactions with George, it was clear that he had ambitious goals.\u201d – Kyle Rohde, UCF associate professor<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He didn\u2019t have to wait long to discover research opportunities, thanks to mentors such as Kimberly Schneider, director of Undergraduate Research<\/a>. \u201cGeorge applied for programs, scholarships and internships that eventually built out an incredible resume,\u201d says Schneider. \u201cHe became a role model.\u201d<\/p>\nOne Day in a Dark Room<\/h2>\n