2019-2020 Avatar: Jocelyn Martin

Hey everyone! My name is Jocelyn Martin. I am a rising senior, a dancer, an unsuccessful comedian and now, a Gatton Academy Avatar!  I’m from Russell High School in Russell, Kentucky. It’s okay if you’ve never heard of it, as it’s basically a really small town five hours away from Bowling Green. As it is quite a ways away, you might be wondering, “How did you even find out about this school?” Well, I was a faithful VAMPY camper for years. For those of you who don’t know, VAMPY is a summer camp for Verbally And Mathematically Precocious Youth. In short, it was nerd camp. I attended nerd camp every year for three years and absolutely fell in love with it. One day, someone said, “Are you planning on applying to Gatton?” I replied, “What’s that?” They said, “Oh, it’s like VAMPY but all the time.” And here I am.

While I now know it isn’t year-round summer camp, I love it just the same, if not more. One of the reasons I really love it, is because now I get to choose my own classes. Creating your own schedule is really amazing because you don’t have to start learning until you want to. For some people, their ideal schedule runs from 8 AM to 3 PM. For me, my ideal schedule runs from 10AM to 1PM, with the occasional three hour lab. My junior semesters, I packed my schedules so that I could do all of the heavy lifting and relax my senior semesters. Now that I am in my senior semesters, I am relaxing. When I say relaxing, I don’t by any means mean I’m going to slack, I’ve just given myself a smaller workload.

Back when I went to regular high school, I was involved in numerous clubs and extracurricular activities. My sophomore year, I was involved with Academic Team, Science Olympiad, Cheerleading, Orchestra, and Community Theater, all while challenging myself academically. Even though I loved being so involved in my community, I knew Gatton was going to be rough change of pace, so I didn’t join any of the clubs that Gatton offers. However, last semester, I began taking classes at a nearby dance studio and this semester I am also taking a ballet class offered by WKU.

This summer, I continued my spring research project with Dr. Andrew Mienaltowski via the WKU Sisterhood Research Internship Grant award. I worked for eight long weeks before going abroad with my classmates to England. This study abroad trip is a part of the Harlaxton program with Gatton. We will be in England for three weeks just soaking up all the diversity and culture. We will also be taking English 200: Introduction to Literature, and as someone who adores Language Arts, I’m quite excited.

All in all, Gatton is an amazing experience and I’m beyond blessed to have this wonderful opportunity. It’s led to outstanding opportunities and some of the best people I have ever met. Sometimes, I look back and wonder what I would be like if I had never come to Gatton. Every time I do, I realize how grateful I am for this opportunity. Anywho, that’s my spiel! Thanks for tuning in!

Jocelyn