Jared Hesse '14

“I was born and raised in Pembroke Pines, Florida and I went to high school at Charles W. Flanagan High School. I wound up choosing the Honors College based on word-of-mouth recommendation: my sister is also an HC alumni! I also visited my sister to scope out the school before committing to application. It was in October, just in time for the Halloween Ball. I was attracted to the small class size, rigorous course work, and general expertise of the faculty. I had a sense that if I worked hard, that the school would have immense value. I also liked how the students were like a cozy little family. At the Honors College, I worked extensively in Student Government - I started out as elections commissioner for the campus for two years and then became Chief of Staff my final year. I was also an OWL, was involved in a few clubs, and worked as a summer janitor, too! I also interned at the Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience for about two years into my final year. My thesis, titled Meaningful Links: Articulating the Structure of Personality Psychology received an Outstanding Thesis Award. I won the Bigony-Pay-It-Forward Scholarship, was briefly a Kenan scholar , and was a Named Scholar. After the Honors College, I was accepted to the Master's in Psychology program at Wake Forest University. I completed my Master's while working in a Parkinson's research lab at the school's neighboring hospital. I produced some published posters, wrote yet another thesis on network science and Parkinson's disease, and worked on a few grants. Currently, I'm living in Las Vegas and working full-time as a data scientist for a healthcare analytics company. I definitely would not have made it without my time at the Honors College.”