They practically majored in extracurricular activities, barely slept a wink and rarely missed a social function. Four years of their lives were a whirlwind of meetings, papers, projects and parties.
Overachievers long have accounted for a significant portion of the student body. But what do they do with their time after graduation day? Here are the stories of three alumni and their lives post-U.Va.
From fraternal to Hippocratic Oath
For as many wild fraternity parties as Frank Carter attended at U.Va., he abstains from alcohol altogether these days.
The former Inter-Fraternity Council President who used to party his weekends away is now a surgeon living in Reading, Pa.
"As a physician, I see the damage alcohol does," said Carter, a 1980 graduate.
As a member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity, Carter's weekends consisted of parties, beer
and well, parties.
"That was a big part of life down there -- the big weekends, the big parties, going down to the all-girls schools," he said.
Carter was also a Residential Advisor his third year and volunteered with Madison House.
"My college activities had nothing to do with medicine," he said. "For me, it was a way of balancing my life, not getting inundated or overwhelmed with the whole pre-med world."
After college, Carter attended medical school at Temple University. There, amid a "T-shirt and blue jeans crowd," he would sport a coat and tie on test days to "rekindle some of the atmosphere I learned at Virginia."
Carter followed up medical school with a five-year residency in Massachusetts, a one-year fellowship in Toronto and two years of work experience at East Carolina University.
Now married with an 8-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, Carter's wild fraternity days are long gone. Sometimes he regrets spending so much time at the fraternity house on weekend nights.
"To spend every weekend at a frat house, drinking beer, is a little wasteful," he said. "I learned that a little fourth year."
Still, it was through his IFC position that Carter met other student leaders, as well as various administrators -- "people that probably the mainstream student never got to meet," he said.
Carter said if students' entire lives at the University revolve around classes and studying, "they'll come away with a good education and an overall good experience.
"But if you get involved, you'll find new pathways of friends, opportunities and challenges," he added. "In the long run, those are the things you'll really remember."
Balancing career and family
When 1991 graduate Diane Krehmeyer was working at The Cavalier Daily, the news canvas looked similar to what it does today. A Bush in the White House. The Gulf War. University budget cuts.
As the newspaper's editor-in-chief, she dealt with two pressures unique to her situation. Since she was a Kappa Delta sorority sister, Krehmeyer said there was an expectation that the paper wouldn't report on incidents of misconduct in the Greek system. Being a female editor-in-chief was a challenge.
"U.Va. was still running off the good old boy network," Krehmeyer said. "People thought they could push me a little harder than someone who was male."
Despite the 60 hours a week she spent working on the paper, Krehmeyer never worked for The Cavalier Daily because she wanted to pursue a career in journalism.
"I was there for the intellectual and social interaction," she said.
Krehmeyer graduated from the University unsure about what kind of career she wanted to pursue.
She stumbled into a job as the director of financial aid and the associate director of admissions at an all-girls boarding school in Maryland. From there, she went on to get her masters' degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.
Krehmeyer worked for the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers before deciding it was time to take a break and think about how to balance a career and a personal life.
"I'm still figuring out what I want to do," she said. "Women struggle with deciding when to start a family and think of the years they've spent building a career, getting a graduate degree. It's hard to think about giving it up."
Now, Krehmeyer owes her sleepless nights not to a job or an extracurricular, but to her 6-month-old son William.
"People always told me that being a mother would change your life," she said. "You can't possibly know what they're talking about until you go through it yourself
You don't know until they put that baby in your arms."
Looking back on her college career, Krehmeyer said, "when you're there, it feels like forever and it feels like it will last forever. It really does go by in the blink of an eye.
"U.Va. is such a special place," she said. "You don't really appreciate it until you graduate and go off to the working world."
An entrepreneurial spirit
Portman Wills is a new member of the "real world," and he has big plans to change it.
During his years at the University, the 2002 graduate was highly involved around Grounds. He was Fourth-Year Class President, a University Guide, the first online manager of The Cavalier Daily, a member of BUCKS and a multicultural education facilitator.
"I had a very specific algorithm that spit out how much time I should devote to activities and to classes," Wills joked. "To classes, it always seemed to say zero percent."
After graduation, Wills, a self-described "computer geek," wasn't interested in the job offers coming his way. So he and his friend Gordon Peters, a 2000 University alumnus, decided to do something a little different.
By combining Wills' computer skills and Peters' business know-how, they developed their own non-profit organization.
The pair wants to help developing nations build up cash flow through technology-based businesses. For example, in Uganda, where Wills said the World Bank has built 19 computer centers, Wills and Peters will train people to do data entry.
"That's just not a job anybody in America wants," Wills said, "but that's something that would thrill them in Uganda
it's not a backbreaking sweatshop job."
When the duo first created their marketing brochure and began mailing it to thousands of organizations around the world, they received no response.
"People were just like, 'What are you talking about? You're 22-years-old. There are people dying around us,'" Wills said.
But Wills and Peters didn't give up, and they got their first acceptance from the Ministry of Education in Rwanda. After amending their marketing material, many organizations began seeking them out.
"We were in a position we never thought we'd be in," Wills said. "We had to choose [which organizations we wanted]."
In January, Wills and Peters will embark on their yearlong journey, traveling to Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, Cambodia and Peru.
After returning to the States, they hope to begin an organization that matches the skills and interests of recent college graduates with the needs of developing countries.
Wills said he realized immediately after graduating how many opportunities exist outside and inside of college.
"While at U.Va., your choice set is so constrained by all these stereotypes of what you're supposed to do," Wills said. "I would just encourage students to think beyond the traditional activities and traditional classes."
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