Thomas Vandiver is completing Georgia Tech’s civil engineering BS/MS program this spring and headed to a dream job in structural engineering and building design. It’s a much different future than seemed possible for Vandiver seven or eight years ago. And it may very well be because he refused — time and again — to give up or settle for the comfortable path.

Vandiver kept working. Kept putting himself out there. Kept overcoming obstacles. 

After high school, Vandiver said he seemed to find trouble around every corner. He spiraled into substance abuse and had several run-ins with the law. For a while, he bounced around what he called dead-end jobs.

“I always kind of floated along through life thinking that I was going to make it big one day,” Vandiver said. “Something or somebody was going to come out of the blue and say, ‘Hey, we’ve been looking for you.’ Thinking I was going to stumble on to something great.”

At 27, Vandiver decided something needed to change.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.