Wake Forest Magazine December 2002 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

Andy Lobashevsky birmingham, ala.
favorite class >
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intro psychology
time management
freedom
chemistry
doctor
The road that eventually led Andy Lobashevsky to Wake Forest
began on top of the Empire State Building when he was 6 years
old, just after he and his parents had immigrated to the United
States from Moscow, Russia. “I remember looking down at all
the people and cars and thinking that America is a really cool
place,” he recalls. “It was scary but awesome. I remember
thinking that this is where I wanted to be.”
Ten years later, he attended a high school debate tournament
at Wake Forest, which eventual-
ly led him to apply for admission to
the class of 2006, mostly on a whim
to see if he could get in, he admits. “I
remember seeing the University’s
motto, Pro Humanitate, and thinking
that that really jives with who I am.
I like the fact that it’s not a traditional
liberal arts university. It has the
diversity and programs of a larger university and is nationally
ranked, but it has the focus of a liberal arts school.”
Not only was he accepted, he also received a Reynolds
Scholarship, the University’s most prestigious merit award.
He knows that this is the place where he wants to be now.
When he says that “every day was like being in a movie, with
brand-new experiences and a burst of knowledge,” you’re
not sure if he’s talking about his first days in America or at
Wake Forest, or both. He may be the only freshman who visited
his grandparents in Russia last summer and then
14 W ake Forest Magazine
College is an opportunity to find out
who I really am. I know there are
aspects of my personality that I
haven’t found yet that will help me
grow as a person.
worked at the quintessential American doughnut store,
Krispy Kreme, when he returned home.
Lobashevsky’s parents were both doctors in Moscow, but
their life there was still difficult, he says. After immigrating
to America, they settled in Memphis, where his father had a
job lined up at the University of Tennessee. They soon
moved to Birmingham, where his father is a researcher with
the University of Alabama transplantation unit and his
mother is a researcher in infectious diseases. He wants to
follow his parents into medicine, but not into research. “I
love working with people. I want to help someone change
their life, and what better way can you impact someone’s life
than to save their life?”
He has an eclectic array of interests,
from playing the piano to martial
arts, and he has already discovered
outlets for two new interests: He’s
helped produce a Wake Forest version
of a reality dating show for WAKE TV,
and he’s trying for his own show on
WAKE Radio. He’s taking a standard
freshman course load – biology, math, psychology and a foreign
language (Russian, he still speaks some), all divisional
requirements – but he’s planning to apply for Open
Curriculum, which would give him more freedom to pick his
courses. “I’ve heard the stories about ‘Work’ Forest,” he says.
“I know that to continue my performance in high school will
require a lot more effort here. Time management is going to
be important too, because there is so much I want to do.”