David Miller
Presidential Scholar
When David Miller ’12 was selected as a Presidential Scholar four years ago, he knew the monetary value attached to the title.
The high honor meant free tuition, room and board for four years, and it was the reason David ultimately decided to enroll at LaGrange. What he didn’t know at the time, he says, was the intangible experiences that came with the opportunity.
“It’s a blessing for me because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to come to school here,” David says. “I am thankful to be chosen to go to LaGrange College, because being selected meant I got to have so many opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise, ones that have been extremely enriching to me.”
Two Presidential Scholars are chosen each year through an application process, followed by an on-campus visit that includes an interview and essay.
The English major and coaching minor originally planned to become a high school English teacher and coach. His love of writing evolved even more during the last four years, and now he hopes to write for a sports magazine.
“Sports Illustrated would be my ideal choice,” he says, smiling. “I hope to take a year off after I graduate, work and then go to grad school before I start a career.”
David, who has played baseball since he was 4, initially played football and baseball his freshman year at LaGrange but ultimately decided to focus on his first love, baseball. He’s played baseball all four years.
“I wasn’t recruited to play baseball for any college but was recruited by LaGrange to play football,” he says.
“I talked it over with my coach after the first season and decided I wanted to continue playing the sport I grew up with. I’m fortunate I’ve been able to play baseball for four more years in college.”
To pursue his love of writing, David found an internship through the college’s Career Center to serve as an intern for a semester at the LaGrange Daily News, an experience he says helped prepare him for the “real world” of writing and producing a publication.
“I started by shadowing the photographer and then the reporters,” he says. “I picked up whatever I could on the fly because I didn’t have any journalism experience, and then after a few weeks, they threw me into the fire and I started writing articles. … I learned the news business is not as easy as it looks. To quote our editor, ‘The newspaper doesn’t just appear on your doorstep every day.’”
He says his favorite article he wrote was a full front-page story in the paper’s weekend edition on the tattoo industry in LaGrange. And though he didn’t get to write about it, he says he also enjoyed trying to find movie celebrities in town for the filming of “Jayne Mansfield’s Car,” a movie being produced by Billy Bob Thornton.
“A reporter, photographer and I went all over the place, to places in the county I’d never even been, trying to find Kevin Bacon and Billy Bob Thornton,” he says.
He says his coaching minor has prepared him should he ever want to teach and coach, and has helped him in his future writing career because of the behind-the-scenes knowledge he has of athletics.
“I feel fortunate to have a coaching minor under my belt; I hadn’t heard of many institutions that have a coaching minor,” he says. “The program does a great job of preparing someone for the coaching field. The classes I took will continue to come in handy, such as one on the philosophy of coaching and one on the prevention and care of athletic injuries. I’m even CPR-certified now because of a class that I took for the coaching minor.”
David says he encourages prospective students to at least visit the campus and see what LaGrange College has to offer.
“Some people may decide not to visit because they think the college is too small,” he says. “It may be smaller in student numbers than some other colleges or universities, but there are so many opportunities here even if you have to create them yourself. The faculty and staff push you to succeed in whatever it is you want to do.”