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

Tyler Barefoot dunn, n.c.
favorite class >
biggest adjustment >
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probable major >
in five years? >
There’s no place like home, Tyler Barefoot knows, but
there’s also a time to move on, and his time is now. “It’s still
weird not being around my parents and brother and grandparents
and cousins,” he said shortly after
arriving at Wake Forest. “Everyone in the
family is still pretty much right there in
Dunn. We spend a lot of time together as
a family. No matter how long you’re away
from home, you still remember the people
you left behind. But there are so
many things that I want to do, and I know
that I can’t do them from the confines of
Dunn, North Carolina. I don’t want to
limit myself.”
Barefoot, the first in his immediate
family to attend a four-year college,
almost ended up in a far different environment.
Like many of his classmates, he
wrote his freshman essay on last fall’s terrorist
attacks. But he took his anger a step
further and applied to the U.S. Naval Academy. When he
wasn’t accepted, he turned his attention back to Wake Forest
and several other schools. “I wanted to go to a smaller school
and be in classes where the professors know me and care about
how I do. I didn’t want to be in a place where I would see people
every day and not know who they were.”
18 W ake Forest Magazine
history with dr. barefield
lack of sleep
new friends & experiences
business
law and/or mba school
To flourish as an individual is as
important as my education.
Being the smartest man alive would
be worthless without a useful
purpose. My purpose is to be a
good person…someone whom is a
pillar of the community, someone
whom people respect, and someone
whom people can look up to
and count on.
Ironically, the fact that his parents were willing to sacrifice
financially to send him to Wake Forest almost sent him
away. His father owns a television-repair shop and his mother
is an insurance and real estate agent. “I didn’t want to put
too much of a (financial) burden on them, so I probably
would have gone somewhere else if I hadn’t gotten a good
amount of financial aid. My parents were so supportive; they
said, don’t worry about the money, we’ll find some way to get
the money, but as much as they’ve done for me, I thought I
needed to rely on myself more. So that made me work harder
in high school so I could get financial aid.”
Barefoot spent the last two years
at the N.C. School of Science and
Mathematics, a public boarding high
school for exceptional high school students,
an experience that he says challenged
him academically for the first time
and helped ease the adjustment of living
away from home. Outside the classroom,
he was an Eagle Scout and a volunteer for
church service projects and a member of
the golf team. At Wake Forest this semester,
he’s tutoring middle-school students
through a service-learning requirement
in his freshman writing seminar, but he
wants to adjust to the academic workload
before taking on other activities.
He admits to being a little worried
about the workload and being away from home: “How am I
going to do? Am I going to make it? I know I need to stop
worrying, because that just stresses you out and then you
won’t do well. I’m confident I’m going to be all right. I’m
planning to give 110 percent.”