It was the similarity in construction projects and baseball season that cemented Jonoven Savage's love of civil engineering.
"It was stressful and intense," said Savage, referring to a summer 2021 internship. "It was unpredictable. We would show up one day, and it would be raining. We couldn't do anything that we planned."
"When you tie it back to sports, that's the closest thing that I found to playing in a season," he said. "The project has a definite start date and a definite end date. You've got to get to the end of it. It can be a painful process, or it can be a really pleasant one."
For Savage, who graduated in spring of 2023, baseball, not engineering, was his original plan.
After graduating from Western Branch High School, he signed with Florence-Darlington Technical College. "They are a big baseball powerhouse," he explained.
Savage played for about three weeks before tearing the UCL on his elbow. He needed surgery, so he moved back home for the procedure.
This led to the most significant period in his life. Not because it was great, but perhaps because it wasn't.
He had transferred to Paul D. Camp Community College (PDCCC) in Franklin, Virginia, and signed with their team.
Savage had spent his whole life in baseball focused on winning. But the players in Franklin didn't share that same dedication. "They looked at the game differently than I did," he said.
Savage, isolated and a bit out of his element, began his first transformation.
He met Tisha Evans, a success coach at PDCCC, who pushed him socially and academically. She helped him to get involved with different organizations on campus. "She really made me start thinking about what was next for me," he said.
Savage, who graduated magna cum laude, ended up being the 2020 commencement speaker for the college.
His second transformation was physical.
"In Franklin, there's not a whole lot to do," Savage explained. "But there's a YMCA with a gym and a weight room. I would wake up in the morning, spend two hours in the gym, leave, go to class, go to practice, and after practice, go back and spend two more hours there."
"I just needed to feel like I was making progress on something," he said. "So, I chose to make myself better physically. And it changed everything. It changed my perspective. And it made me realize what discipline is all about."
Looking for a challenge, Savage took an unusual path to his major. "I literally Googled hard majors, and engineering was one of them," he said. "Growing up, I couldn't tell you what engineering was," he said. "I didn't know any engineers. I'd never heard of anyone becoming an engineer."
It was his experience in another country that brought it all together.
During his first international trip - to Rome, Italy - Savage was inspired by the historical architecture. "I was blown away by the fact that I was walking around a coliseum that had been there for so many years and that it was built by hand," he said.
Savage decided to focus on civil engineering and construction.
As a transfer student to Old Dominion University, Savage found inspiration in people like Duc Nguyen, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "Professor Duc radiates energy," Savage said. "We're learning about numbers, calculations, and materials - it's so hard to make that interesting. But his energy is just so potent. He gets up there and he captures your attention."
Nguyen, in turn, appreciated Savage's persistence.
"In the beginning of this semester, Jonoven had "zero knowledge" about MATLAB programming, and I made a lot of (friendly) jokes about him in front of his classmates because he made so many errors," Nguyen said. "However, he was determined to overcome his weakness by continuing to ask many questions during my class lectures, and during my private office consulting hours," Nguyen said. "Near the end of Spring' 2023 semester, he had developed a good working knowledge about MATLAB programming skills."
Outside of the classroom, Savage found a social community and leadership opportunities. He joined the Summit student organization and served as vice president in 2021 and president in 2022.
Savage also allotted time for physical fitness spending two to three hours daily in the weight room at the ODU Recreation and Fitness Center. It was there that he picked up a new job title as well: personal trainer.
Savage applied that discipline in his pursuit of a full-time job.
He spent two semesters as an intern with the Whiting Turner-Contracting Company and another summer with Lynch Mykins Structural Engineers.
Nearly a year before graduation, Savage began networking with luxury homebuilders. "Every single day, I reached out to people in Aspen, the Hamptons and Miami - the regions where they build luxury homes," he explained.
Savage applied for seven open positions at Dowbuilt, a custom homebuilding company based in Seattle. When he got the call for the interview, he didn't even know the position was located in Kauai, Hawaii.
In addition to the natural beauty of Hawaii, Savage is looking forward to the challenge of being on his own. "I'm stoked to be in a place where I can't just come home for the weekend," he said.
He's not planning on bringing any winter clothes, just a few pairs of shorts, boots, jeans and a handful of books.
"I always say that when I'm 70 years old, I want to write a book about my life and it needs to be a New York Times bestseller," Savage said. "In order for me to do that, I've got to do some interesting stuff along the way like graduate college with no money and move to an island in the middle of the Pacific."
"It just makes for a better story."