John Reid, Jr.
A stand-up, stand-out on and off the Field
A tremendous amount of dedication and drive is needed to play a Division I sport. For Nittany Lion cornerback John Reid Jr., that dedication and drive are second-nature, and he’s using those qualities not just for success on the football field, but in his academic career as well. While some might find the dual demands of Penn State football and an academically rigorous major daunting; Reid, a data science major in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is up to the challenge. “You have to really want to do it, to the point where you’re passionate about it. You’ve got to be ready to sacrifice because like, for me, I give up a lot of time to be able to do both [football and engineering], and I want to do both,” said Reid.
The dual path of sports and science has been a goal of Reid’s for a long time. He was stand-out athlete in basketball, track and especially football at St. Joseph’s Prep in Philadelphia, where he also discovered his passion for computer science. He took a computer science class his junior year and was immediately hooked. The same will to succeed that has propelled Reid on the gridiron, pushed him in his academic pursuits. Classroom instruction wasn’t enough for Reid – he decided to build his own computer. “I’m kind of competitive in everything I do, and I needed a powerful computer for gaming. But I didn’t want to just buy a regular computer. I wanted to make my own. So, I kind of spent two years or so getting the money together, and getting different computer parts, and then my junior or senior year, I finally put it all together and built it, and I’ve kind of been updating it every summer.”
Instead of draining his drive and focus, Reid’s dual interests have sharpened them. He feels the qualities needed for success in football and computer science reinforce each other. “In football, you can work really hard at something and put a lot of time in and improve,” Reid notes. “And I feel like it’s the same with computer science. They kind of play off each other because the same type of discipline and hard work you need to have for football is the same type of discipline and hard work you need to have with data science. And you kind of need to increase it.”
Reid’s hard work and discipline have paid off, the road to success hasn’t always been easy. “I’m one of the first people in my family to go to college so I didn’t know what to expect. The beginning of my college career was just trying to play catchup with everyone else. My freshman year I felt so behind.” Through hard work, dedication and confidence in his future, Reid transcended his early difficulties. “You have to really want to do it, to the point where you’re passionate about it. You’ve got to be ready to sacrifice because like, for me, I give up a lot of time to be able to do both [football and engineering], and I want to do both.”
Reid credits Penn State with being an integral part of his success, both on and off the field. Not only enabling him to play football at the highest level, but strengthening his academic career as well. Reid earned a spot in Penn State’s Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP), which helped him focus his academic goals. “My computer science classes and SROP got me really interested in the machine learning side of everything. I still wanted to program a lot, and I wanted to keep all my comp-sci classes, but I wanted to pick up more statistics classes so I could understand a lot better what was going on in the background of machine learning. When they offered [a data science major within computer science and engineering], it kind of seemed like one of the best options to do that.” The Penn State community has also helped him thrive. “Everywhere you go, there are people from Penn State, and I think just always having that big network is important.”
Reid has ambitious post-graduation plans, including professional football. He also hopes to have a career in software engineering. “Since there aren’t many football players in engineering, I feel like if I do well here, I can make an impact, and that is a way to separate myself in a good way. I see it as an opportunity, not as a negative. Perspective is everything.” Whatever the future brings, Reid’s character, work ethic and dedication, honed at Penn State, will lead to continued success.
