If The Lamron’s Photo Editor Zoe Finn didn’t nominate the “guy in the purple shirt” for this very article, we would have never had the pleasure of meeting sophomore Grant Kusick, who said he’s “obsessed with being productive.” Kusick compares himself to Johannes Sebastian Bach, who said “I’m obliged to be industrious.”
“I would consider myself a goal-oriented person,” Kusick said. “What I’m realizing is that I don’t derive as much satisfaction from the sort of normal things that people go about doing.” And this is true: What he loves to do most is “getting things done.”
A typical day in the life of Kusick involves a morning of strength training at the gym (“I try to get three to four sessions in per week”), class, then relaxation before he delves into his school work. Arguably most students finish their work in order to relax, but Kusick said that he relaxes to prepare himself for work. It pays off, as he said he rarely finds himself cramming for assignments.
Kusick learned early on that procrastination does not fall in line with this mentality: “What you have to remember is that if you put something off, you’re probably going to do worse on that assignment, or you’re going to be really miserable,” he said, adding that he always “pays for it” when he procrastinates.
“If you have the opportunity to do it, do what you know is going to be in your best interest,” he said. Kusick’s keys to productive success include “being able to self-analyze, know what’s the right thing to do and having the willpower obviously to execute that.”
Now that he’s mastered the art of college coursework, Kusick has noticed a comfortable pace in which he retains more information than when he crams. It’s hard in college, he said, where there is more freedom than ever with deadlines: “You have to make yourself do the work and I think the issue is that people aren’t prepared for that in high school.”
“Expecting people to magically adapt to that is hard … the fault may be with secondary education more than higher education,” he said.
A biology and Spanish major in the Edgar Fellows program, Kusick said that his repertoire of interests – biology, literature, classical music – is an “easy thing to let happen to yourself at a liberal arts college.” But his goal of going to a top graduate school to become a biologist keeps him on track, as he knew he loved science since taking AP Chemistry in his sophomore year of high school.
Through his studies, Kusick aims to deflate the “false dichotomy between the humanities and the sciences” as studying both requires the ability to think analytically and critically. When he was a freshman, Kusick had a lot of high school credits, and was not afraid to take classes that interested him. Courses like political science and British literature have rounded out his thinking ability, and they’ve been beneficial to him, he said.
Coming upon his junior year, Kusick said that there are more than enough offerings in biology and Spanish to continue his productive academic career in strides.
Kusick’s goals for the remainder of the semester include achieving a 4.0 GPA (“I had a 3.97 last semester.”) and to not let his semester pass him by.
“When you live deadline by deadline, that can happen,” he said.
Coursework aside, Kusick loves to dance, especially at the Inn Between Tavern. On weekends, he lets himself “notch down the pace a little bit.”