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Math wiz John Urschel looks to help PSU crunch some big numbers this fall THE GRADE MAKING T MATT HERB |M A T T@B L U EWH I T E O N L I N E . C O M he toughest class of John Urschel's academic career? Easy question. "English 15," he said without a moment's hesitation. "Entry-lev- el English." English 15 is indeed Penn State's ba- sic rhetoric class. Described on the uni- versity's website as "the study of how language works and how to make it work well," the class has been a rite of passage for generations of Penn State students. It was the very first class Urschel ever attended after arriving at University Park in the summer of 2009, and he remembers it vividly: where it met (Sparks Building), who taught it (a grad student specializing in poetry), and how, fresh out of high school, he struggled to grasp the fin- er points of composition. You might think for a guy like Urschel, whose diligent approach to schoolwork was shaped by his father, a thoracic surgeon in his native Cana- da, a class like English 15 would be a formality. But Urschel is a numbers guy. Always has been. He planned to major in engi- neering when he enrolled at Penn State, then changed his focus to mathematics when he realized that the math class- es he was taking were the ones he en- joyed most. Trying to turn himself into a wordsmith was no easy task. "It was my first class, and I wasn't 34 J U N E 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 very good at English," he recalled. "At that time, I wasn't very good at writing. It was creative writing, narrative-type things. I'd say that was probably the toughest class I've had so far. … I'll take 400-level math over writing any day." And yet Urschel didn't just muddle through. He didn't settle for the pass- ing grade that would have allowed him to check off that particular requirement and live to write another day. He got an A. The first of many. These days, Urschel is known as one of the best students on the Penn State football team. By attending summer school every year and taking five or six classes a semester, he was able to graduate in three years, com- piling a perfect 4.0 GPA before picking up his undergraduate diploma last month. He didn't come to Penn State with a plan to graduate early, but when he discovered after a few years on cam- pus that he had an opportunity to do so, he seized it. "I'm a math major, and I'm good at math," he said. "If I were an English major, I'd probably be struggling right now, or if I were in women's studies or something like that. But thankfully, I'm doing something I'm good at." Urschel, who has two more seasons of eligibility remaining, has been apply- ing that same determined approach to his football career. Playing on a unit that is being reshaped following the W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M

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