Anyone with a degree of ambition knows that life can throw a monkey wrench into your best-laid plans. Those who came of age during the COVID-19 pandemic experienced that phenomenon on a scale never seen before. An entire generation was derailed and left to forge their way back on track through uncharted territory.
For Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) graduating senior Shakira Jean-Jules, that detour proved to be something wholly unexpected: Serendipity.
Jean-Jules grew up in Miami, Fla., “Where the sun beams on your skin so hard, you’ll melt quicker than an ice cream cone.” She was raised by her parents, Haitian immigrants whose lives were rooted in faith and hard work. Her father was a business owner and pastor, and her mother was a nurse.
“They did their absolute best to raise me in a country that was foreign to them,” said Jean-Jules. “While they didn’t know much about the culture here, the one thing they knew deeply was the value of education.”
That belief drove Jean-Jules to excel at school. She kept her grades up, volunteered and prayed to get into a big-name school like the University of Florida or Florida State University. She felt in her heart it was her destiny, and as she approached her junior year, that goal seemed so close she could reach out and touch it. But the year was 2020. She was attending William H. Turner Technical Arts High School in Miami-Dade County. That March, when she and her classmates were sent home for Spring Break, they never returned.
“We thought we were almost at the finish line,” she recalls. “But there was no Junior Bash. Instead, we were sitting behind screens in school shirts and pajama pants, taking naps between classes. We didn’t need to hear the definition of ‘pandemic’ to know that life had changed. Many people lacked immunity, not just to the virus, but to the mental, emotional and financial toll it took.”
All the colleges she was aiming to attend required SAT scores for her application to even be considered. She scheduled and rescheduled her exam seven times before she realized it would just keep getting canceled.
“I felt lost. Stuck. Discouraged,” she says. “But then I stumbled on a Georgia Gwinnett College advertisement that mentioned a SAT waiver and free application. It felt too perfect.”
But it wasn’t. She started her first summer class at GGC with the intention of getting a nursing degree. “I had no intention of getting involved or meeting people.”
Serendipity struck and she found a new passion for helping people when she changed her major to Health Science with a concentration in public health. But when out-of-state tuition became overwhelming and she started considering moving back to Miami, she realized she didn’t want to leave.
To stay, she joined the Georgia Army National Guard and GGC’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. What started as a way to pay for school turned into a family.
“We slept with bugs in the woods, baked in the hot Georgia sun pulling security and got lost in the dark doing land navigation,” she recalls. “Embracing what is hard together is what brought us closer.”
It was then she realized everything she always wanted was right in front of her at GGC. She got involved, serving in multiple leadership roles and as a residential assistant for three years, and started a Bible study group that is still active today.
“Being a Grizzly has taught me humility,” she says. “It brought me into a community and handed me opportunities to build resilience. It wasn’t what I planned, but it’s what I needed, and I’m grateful.”
GGC students create AI-powered study buddy app
You’ve got your textbook, your notes and a study group, but sometimes, a little extra help can make all the difference.
For three Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) students, that extra help comes in the form of an artificial intelligence (AI) app they developed to support students preparing for exams across a variety of subjects.
Keyvaun Herring, a Lilburn resident and GGC senior majoring in IT with a systems and cybersecurity concentration says: “Originally, we centered the app around math, but we shifted to technology since it’s growing and AI is taking over the market.”
The app, called Pi, takes its name from the mathematical ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Even after pivoting to a broader technology focus, the team kept the name and incorporated a pie graphic into the app’s design.
How does Pi help students study?
Lorena Salazar, a Winder resident and senior majoring in IT with a concentration in systems and cybersecurity, says: “You can give it a subject, and it will generate short quiz questions based on specific pieces of information.”
Beyond practice questions, Pi also creates flashcards and customized study plans, allowing users to tailor their experience.
Kyla Thorpe, a Suwanee resident and junior majoring in IT with a concentration in systems and cybersecurity adds: “You can even choose how many flashcards you want to study.”
The app took approximately two months to develop, offering the students valuable hands-on experience.
Thorpe says: “This is one of my first AI projects, so I learned a lot of Python. I also learned how to integrate AI into a real-world application.”
Throughout the process, the team discovered that building an app requires more than technical skills.
Herring finds: “It’s been a new experience to apply everything we’ve learned during our studies in cybersecurity and software development. You also have to know how to work effectively as a team.”
While Pi is not yet widely available, the students hope to expand its capabilities in the future. “We’d like to make it more comprehensive and cover more subjects,” says Thorpe. “But Pi is designed to help you study—not do the work for you.”
As graduation approaches, each student is preparing for the next step in their journey.
Herring is currently seeking internships, with plans to secure a full-time role at a financial firm specializing in Java.
Salazar is looking for a fall internship, where she hopes to explore different areas within IT. “That experience will help me figure out what I want to specialize in,” she says.
For Thorpe, the future includes continuing her education. “I’ll see where the wind takes me,” she says. “But I definitely want to pursue a master’s degree in cybersecurity.”
