Emily Brett, a sand volleyball player and biomedical engineering major, is rarely frazzled by the daily stresses of balancing engineering classes and sand volleyball. Surprisingly, Brett braces her busiest day of the week, which is Tuesday, with a calm ease.
On Tuesday Brett wakes up at 6:30 a.m. to run one lap around Mercer’s campus and then walks over to the University Center to continue her workout. For breakfast, the athlete typically eats oatmeal with fruit.
The sand volleyball player’s first class is called biomaterial and lasts from 9:25 a.m. to 10:40 a.m. The course is a senior level BME class, but Brett is the only junior taking the class.
Brett admits that her engineering coursework is challenging this semester, “I have upper level courses for BME [Biomedical Engineering], so my classes are harder.”
Despite taking her lowest amount of hours this semester, Brett thinks schoolwork is challenging, “I don’t have that many hours. I’m only taking 13 hours this semester, which is the lowest. Normally it’s 16 or more [hours] every other semester. I don’t have a heavy class load, but the classes are tough.”
Right after Brett’s Biomaterial class, she darts over to her bioinstrumentation class, which starts at 10:50 a.m. Fortunately, Brett’s walk to her second class is only a few steps away since most of her classes are in the engineering building.
The aspiring engineer loves being involved with other campus organizations. Brett is an officer for Prosthetics and Orthotics Club, which means she helps to coordinate events for the club. For example, Brett helped organize a fundraiser at the Hay House and helped plan the dinner and decorations.
After her engineering class Brett walks to the cafeteria to eat lunch with her roommate at 12:15 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. She will typically eat a sandwich for lunch.
Brett’s next classes old testament prophets, an upper level old testament class, which allows for the biomedical engineer major to have a change of scenery from the engineering building. The class lasts from 1:40 p.m. to 2:55 p.m.
Making sure not to waste any time, Brett hustles from her old testament class to the library at 3 p.m. and tries to squeeze in one hour of homework.
After finishing some homework, Brett heads over to the locker room at 4:30 p.m. for sand volleyball practice which last until 6:30 p.m.
According to Brett, the season is going well for sand volleyball and each of the pairing has won at least one match, but is struggling to win as a team. “As pairs we are doing well, but as a team we haven’t been able to bring that all together,” Brett said.
When practice is over, the athlete eats dinner and takes a shower. Around this time it is 7:30 p.m.
Usually at 7:30 p.m. Brett will begin to tackle her mounds of homework, but on Tuesday Brett goes to her disciple group at 8 p.m., which is a part of Campus Outreach– a Christian ministry group on campus. Brett’s discipleship group is a group of five juniors, a sophomore and two senior leaders. The group meets weekly to study the Bible.
Discipleship groups ends at 10 p.m. After her discipleship group Brett will head home and start tackling on her pile of homework. She typically stays up till 12 a.m. or 1 a.m. finishing homework.
Brett believes that her teammates help to keep her pushing forward. “I would definitely say that the team keeps the morale up. During practice it’s always fun to hang out with the team and just get energy from them,” Brett said.
Brett plays sand volleyball with her fraternal twin sister, Erin Brett, who is also an engineering major, which helps her to keep pushing focused.
The engineering community also helps to keep Brett on top of her grades because they try to help one another out, “Most of the engineers know each other, so everyone tries to help…Once you get into engineering and you realize it’s a lot of work everyone helps each other out,” said Brett.
Day in the Life: Emily Brett
