Closing in on the dream


FIU Magazine Fall 2010 cover with Johnathan Cyprien
When I first met Johnathan Cyprien ’12 in spring 2010, he’d played one season of football and was already a rising star. We featured him on the cover of the FIU Magazine at the start of the historic 2010 season (see right).

When we made that photograph we had no idea what great things would follow Johnathan: a Sun Belt Conference Championship and the university’s first bowl win. He graduated six months early with a degree in hospitality and tourism management as the football program’s all-time leading tackler. We chose him back then because he embodied the best of our student athletes: honor roll academic performance, hard work, positive attitude and raw talent. Once he spoke to me of wanting a career where he could “wear a suit.” He will have plenty of opportunity to do that now. In April, Johnathan became the highest draft pick in FIU football history when the Jacksonvile Jaguars selected him first in the second round.

Playing pro is Johnathan’s dream come true. “I invested a lot throughout my life to play football, giving up certain things to do better on the football field, whether it was not going out or not eating something, working out every day, training instead of sleeping in. It’s been a lot of work.”

Many FIU students arrive with a dream that amounts to a long shot. The dream may be Johnathan’s – to make the most of your gift of athleticism on a fiercely competitive national stage. The dream may be to become a celebrated poet, even if you are an engineer like Richard Blanco ’91, MFA ‘97. The dream may be to heal people, as it was for liver transplant recipient Trine Engebretsten MD ’13 on our cover.

Here, that long shot draws ever closer through each hour of relentless effort. Daily training sessions at dawn. Countless drafts and rewrites. Years poring over books. This university doesn’t deliver dreams in a eureka moment. Rather, FIU does the hard work right alongside the dreamers, cheering for them all the way.

Until next time,

— Deborah O’Neil MA ’09

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