@ ISSUE BALANCING ACT
our cap to Yellow AnsweringTipping the question, “What does Jackets Georgiawho Tech think?” know how to multitask.
∏ Tech student Rosalee Ramer has been driving professionally since age 14. 042
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At the time, however, Ramer was The Rosalee Ramer File still very much a teenager and also a very serious student. She took nuAge: 18 (soon to be 19) merous AP classes and participated School: Georgia Tech on the dance team at Pacific ColleMajor: Mechanical giate in Santa Cruz, Calif., a small engineering charter high school that is perennially Sport: Monster truck ranked as one of the best in the counracing try. She admits that when she started Tours: Monster Jam thinking about college, Georgia Tech and others Specialty: Big air wasn’t even on her radar. “All I knew Driving style: Heavy on is I wanted to study mechanical enthe throttle gineering and move toward a career Monster truck name: working in the automotive industry, Wildflower preferably in design,” she says. License plate: Princess After an almost-random meeting Truck height: 12 feet tall with a Tech representative visiting her Truck weight: 5 tons (10,000 pounds) school, Ramer applied and made a Truck body: Customtrip to Atlanta in the fall of 2014. She ized 1932 Ford pickup also considered MIT and Tulane, but Truck details: 2-inch she says, Tech was the closest she came 188-wall tubing chassis, to feeling at home. “I wanted to live in 565-cubic-inch blown the South and experience something alcohol motor, 2-speed transmission, 66-inch different and new,” she says. terra tires (made for ferRamer also wanted to maximize tilizer spreaders), 4-link her opportunities to turn her passion setup suspension with for motorsports into an automo30-inch rear and 26tive engineering career. “My parents inch front nitrogen didn’t go to a four-year college, they’re triple-bypass shocks, small-business owners of a towing front and rear hydraulic suspension company and they’ve never been big Truck safety features: fans of the corporate world,” she says. Custom-molded seat “But I wanted to see what it’s like to with 7-point harness work at an engineering firm for one with ratchet tightening; of the car companies. I’m hoping my R3 neck support, 3-layer Tech education will help me land an fire suit with headsock, internship at Porsche or GM.” glove and shoes When she first arrived on campus, Ramer didn’t tell anyone about her background—at first that is. “I wanted to keep my school and private lives separate,” she says. “But after about a month in the dorm, I traded my Instagram handle with my new friends and then they saw how many fans I had and stumbled across that Ellen video.” After her dorm mates were star struck, they quickly became her support system for balancing her two distinctly different lives, and even routinely sent Ramer off to the airport at the end of each week. “When I brought home my first trophy for winning the donut competition at a Monster Jam event in San Diego, they freaked out,” she says. “They were so excited for me.” This spring semester, Ramer’s show schedule required her to leave campus nearly every Thursday and return that Sunday. Adam Hester