Turn around, look at that building and
tell me what you feel. How
do you feel? I feel very good from the
moment. I stepped in this morning and I
went to the wall of all the professors
and other employees who've worked here...
It brought back a lot of good memories
to me, very good memories.
I am Gayla Taylor Smith and I was a
first generation student here at North
Carolina State University, class of 1976.
This is a picture and of course that's
me with an afro celebrating my birthday actually in our dorm room. I am
from a small town called Arapaho, North
Carolina. That's in Pamlico
County, it's about 22 miles from New Bern. It was a farming community. We grew
all the things that you eat: potatoes...
cucumbers. Our parents were very good, they
gave us a choice, they said: "You don't
like working in tobacco? We suggest that
you do something else with your life." My
sister and I, and brothers, thought about
that. We said we think we would choose
college. I would never forget that. To
me, that's one of the best things that a
university can do: send a
representative. He talked about food
science, I had never heard of food
science before, and the way he did it...he
said they do research to
actually help make products that were
actually developed food for astronauts.
And I perked up and went: astronauts,
space program? I love that. My
parents are proud I was the first one
from the family to go to a college and
they were telling everyone in the
community how daughter's going to NC
State. I would study and study and study
and I loved just looking at the formulas
and the structure of the molecules. I
think it was just natural for me to
say that, but I also take it back to my farm days growing
up on the farm. Food science as a major
was very interesting because it dealt
with day-to-day things. That was a good
department for me to be in.
It was full size because it related back to
the way I grew up.
It showed that you can take what have
you done in your past and you can make
it work in the future.
