Malakie discovered that classes outside his comfort zone — and conversations that welcomed every perspective — opened a wider world than the game that first brought him to Guilford.
“The classes people think have nothing to do with your major are the ones that make you a better thinker, a better person. Guilford changed the way I look at everything around me – how I communicate, how I see other perspectives.”
Malakie Harris ’26 walked across Guilford College’s campus on one of those leaf-bright October afternoons the College is famous for and felt something shift. The oaks and maples were throwing down their reds and golds, and the red-brick buildings looked older yet somehow alive.
“It was the leaves,” he remembers now, “the way they made everything look new.”
In a way, Malakie is new, too. The Cyber & Network Security major is no longer the high school student obsessed so much with baseball. Guilford changed him, he says, for the better. “My purpose now isn’t baseball,” Malakie says. “It’s a pivot point in my life, not my focus.”
Baseball gave him community and structure, but Guilford’s classrooms — and the conversations inside them — sparked a different kind of growth.
That pivotal moment came when Malakie enrolled in Jesus and Film in Pop Culture, a religious studies course taught by Jill Peterfeso, Eli Franklin Craven and Minnie Phipps Craven Professor for Religious Studies. The class, which examines Jesus of Nazareth through scriptures, films, literature and art, surprised Malakie with its elasticity of ideas.
“In cybersecurity, if the code isn’t right, you start over,” he explains. “But in Jill’s class, everyone had different ideas about one topic, and everyone could be right in their thinking because it was their perspective. That changed how I think.”
The course offered more than academic insight. “I’ve always questioned things,” Malakie says. Growing up in Spencer, N.C., Malakie says he was always asking his parents questions. "In Jill’s class, questioning is encouraged," he says. "It helped me understand how I need to learn. It taught me a lot about how to see others and what the bigger world was like outside of my little world.”
Here’s what Guilford taught Malakie about Malakie: He began to see that his own path didn’t have to be binary either. “I realized I’m too much of a people person to stay behind a desk forever,” he says. “I know I want to help people. I just don’t know how yet.”
Maybe cybersecurity, maybe business, maybe something he hasn’t imagined. Next year he’ll start his pursuit of an MBA at Guilford, gaining more knowledge and more time to think.
For Malakie, that openness to discovering one’s gifts is what makes Guilford unique.
“The classes people think have nothing to do with your major are the ones that make you a better thinker, a better person,” he says. “Guilford changed the way I look at everything around me – how I communicate, how I see other perspectives.”
If you’re looking for a college that will challenge how you think and help you uncover your passion, connect with Steve Mencarini at Guilford College to start the conversation about your future.