{"id":8811,"date":"2020-05-22T20:08:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-23T00:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2020\/05\/27\/taylor-griffin-22-awarded-prestigious-army-internship\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T19:30:49","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T00:30:49","slug":"taylor-griffin-22-awarded-prestigious-army-internship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/taylor-griffin-22-awarded-prestigious-army-internship\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Griffin ’22 awarded prestigious Army internship"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taylor Griffin \u201922 may be an incredibly driven rising star in the Army\u2019s Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) at Furman, but she\u2019s also only human.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve become a night owl. It\u2019s hard to wake up at 5:30 in the morning when you aren\u2019t obligated to for PT (physical training),\u201d she said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s world was turned upside down by the novel COVID-19 virus, and suddenly finding herself at home in Lexington, South Carolina, with her family in March instead of on campus meant some serious changes to Griffin\u2019s regimented schedule as a member of the Paladin Battalion<\/a>. Still, she is quick to note she hasn\u2019t turned into a chip-munching couch potato.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I don\u2019t work out, then I lose sanity,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been finding myself working out before dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Griffin had hoped to be somewhere else this summer, at least for a few weeks. Earlier in the year she became one of just four people selected for a prestigious internship at the Army\u2019s Medical Department Cadet Internship Program in Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, only to see it cancelled as part of efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

Griffin would have spent four weeks at one of the nation\u2019s premier chemical and biological defense laboratories in a program for undergraduate students designed to foster research, development, testing and application of technologies by conducing science and engineering research in areas of interest to CCDC Chemical Biological Center in onsite laboratories.\u00a0It\u2019s an unfortunate missed opportunity but doesn\u2019t change the fact that Griffin had excelled enough to earn the chance in the first place.<\/p>\n

\"Zach

1st Lt. Zach Griffin ’16 pins jump wings\u00a0 on his sister, Taylor Griffin ’22, after Taylor completed Jump School last summer in Fort Benning, Georgia, to earn the Army’s Basic Parachutist Badge.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lt. Col. Christopher Manganaro, the Furman Army ROTC professor of military science, says Griffin is one of his finest cadets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the battalion of 91, she\u2019s probably No. 3. But in her sophomore class, she\u2019s No. 1. And that\u2019s saying a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s going to be the battalion commander, which is the No. 1 overall top senior cadet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cadets are ranked by a combination GPA, physical fitness test scores and ROTC training performance that includes weapons marksmanship and land navigation. Griffin, a health sciences major<\/a>, is an excellent student who has also been on Furman\u2019s Ranger Challenge team since she was a freshman.<\/p>\n

The Ranger Challenge<\/a> is the Army ROTC varsity sport, and schools across the country compete against each other using physical fitness and tactical skills. Maintaining that level of fitness is difficult under any circumstances, but it\u2019s only part of the what\u2019s required to succeed, much less stand out, in ROTC.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking for a three-pegged stool, not one leg stronger than the other,\u201d Manganaro said. \u201cIf you have a 1,600 SAT score but aren\u2019t physically fit, that doesn\u2019t help us. If you\u2019re physically fit but can\u2019t handle the school work, that doesn\u2019t help us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Griffin, a serious high school soccer player who competes on the Furman club team, was inspired to pursue not only ROTC but ROTC at Furman by the positive experience her brother, Zach Griffin \u201916, had. When she started as a first-year student, however, she wondered if she\u2019d made a mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first semester doing it as a freshman, I think I was just very intimidated by it,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cI\u2019m a very upbeat, silly person, and when I got there it seemed so serious. And it is. Having to learn how to lead is a serious thing, and I didn\u2019t feel like that was for me personally. But then I started to develop into that role, and I realized some of those attributes that I really want to have and work toward.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said a big confidence boost came from participating in Airborne School<\/a> last summer, which made her \u201cfeel like I was in the right place and this is what I should be doing.\u201d Last year, Griffin led eight second-year cadets, and she is in line to potentially be a platoon leader to about 40 cadets as a third-year student.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell in love with doing PT and being in that community where people build each other up, and now as a team leader I\u2019m getting to learn how to lead people and do things that show the people that I\u2019m leading that I care about them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

ROTC participants receive full scholarships to attend college, and it\u2019s one of three ways \u2013 alongside attending West Point and going through Officer Candidate School after being an enlisted soldier for four years \u2013 to become an officer in the Army. There\u2019s a 100% job-placement rate after graduation, but the exchange is gaining and maintaining the discipline required for early morning workouts and constant training obligations on top of being a student.<\/p>\n

Griffin says it\u2019s more than worth it.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy absolute dream job would be to be a physician assistant in the Army. I would get to be an officer and a PA at the same time, but there are a lot of stepping stones before I reach that point,\u201d she said. \u201c(ROTC) puts you in an environment to succeed. I feel lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taylor Griffin \u201922 may be an incredibly driven rising star in the Army\u2019s Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) at Furman, but she\u2019s also only human. \u201cI\u2019ve become a night owl. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":18602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,44,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-military-science-rotc","category-top-four-news-2nd-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}