IB Featured Alumni

I was recently selected as an “IB Featured Alumni” because of my role as the creator of the relatively popular Facebook group, “IB Survivors.” See IB’s bio of me on Facebook here, or see my reposted biography after the jump.

Andrew Guyton
Computer Science major at Georgia Tech

Andrew has lived in three states in the US: Colorado, Florida, and (most recently) Georgia. He lived in Heidelberg, Germany for three years. His areas of interest are math and history, doubling up on the former in 11th grade as he set curves in his IB courses in the latter. He worked over a summer as a historical reenactor at a local museum, and but eventually chose a more mathematically inclined career path. He attributes this path to his “incredible” AP Calc BC/IB Higher Level instructor, James Bobbitt. At Georgia Tech, he entered as an electrical engineering major, but eventually switched to computer science. He is involved with GT’s student newspaper, “The Technique,” and has co-oped at GTRI since Summer 2005. His primary hobby in recent years is editing Wikipedia, especially articles pertaining to Georgia Tech and its history; as it now has several well-written and well-sourced ‘Good Articles’ and a few ‘Featured Articles.’ So while he has not performed any literary analysis or been able to employ his French studies, he has been given back to the world on Wikipedia through his love of history, and continuing my education with more math-based subjects.

When asked how the IB experience has influenced him, Andrew says, “If it wasn’t for IB, I probably wouldn’t have gone to Georgia Tech. While I didn’t get that many credit hours from my IB or AP classes, IB taught me how to do well in this environment, so the first few years of college were actually easier than my last few years of high school. IB also got me interested in mathematics, which has gradually led me to my current degree/profession as a programmer and computer scientist.”

Andrew formed a group on Facebook called, “IB Survivors.” Andrew remarks on his idea for the group, “IB has never had a very strong social network as far as I could tell. While there were smaller groups and organizations, there was no over-arching group for IB students at the time, so it struck me as an obvious step to form it and invite my existing friends from IB. From that point, I’ve been relatively hands-off, letting the discussions that occurred happen organically.”

Here is a link to his blog: http://disavian.no-ip.info/