Carly Mecl is a first year Cognitive Studies major at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee. Carly has many extracurricular interests, from fencing to music outreach, from working with disabled students to the psychology club; but her greatest interest and love is working with children with disabilities. Currently she is employed as a Personal Care Attendant for a nine-year-old autistic boy. Her mother Rhonda’s position with the FDA has motivated Carly, too, to find a career that services others. Her dream job is an administrative position at a school for disabled children, or a professor of developmental psychology.

What inspires Carly to succeed in school is a vision of her future: she knows that if she studies hard now, she will be rewarded with an enjoyable, solid career. In the meanwhile, Carly has a very unique strategy for de-stressing: she likes to eat peach rings and shoot her Nerf dart gun at her mirror to relax.