Ben Smith

Graduated: 2001

Major: English

Currently: Independent Contractor

Life after college has taken me in as many different and diverse directions as life during college when I changed majors at least a half-dozen times, from architecture to business, education to liberal arts, and a few others. Since then, I’ve been a concert production manager, a high school English teacher, an on-air radio news reporter, an audio engineer, a master’s degree recipient, a youth conditioning specialist (current as of this writing), and a technical (and more) director at a university conference center (also current as of this writing) among other things. Otherwise, I still live in Charlotte after brief stints in Richmond, Virginia, and New York City; spend time with a finally-settled number of dogs (three, after housing a number of rescues over the years); and enjoy riding my Harley anywhere a few tanks of gas and the daylight will get me.

More specific to my Honors experience, I spent all four of my undergrad years (and a couple grad years as well) helping to facilitate the food recovery program on campus, from driving the van and coordinating with food vendors to developing marketing materials and presentations. There’s just something about slinging leftovers and then hoping the van lives to make it back home that really bonds a group of strangers. Also, for those involved, there’s no forgetting roofing a house in the South Carolina lowcountry on a blazing, muggy, early autumn day and getting to spend an hour or so huddled under a tarp (still on the roof—the entrapped aroma overpowered the surrounding marsh) as the daily afternoon thunderstorm rolled through. I’m not sure which was brighter that day: the sun or the bare-skinned torsos.