Groton ― Camryn Hobbs, a senior at Ella T. Grasso Technical High School, is always busy, whether she’s doing school work, learning new skills at Electric Boat, helping her family or playing sports.

On a typical day, Hobbs, a Mechanical Design and Engineering Technology student, arrives at school in the morning and completes in just two hours a full day’s worth of schoolwork. She then goes to work-based learning at Electric Boat, returns to school for softball, and after that, sometimes helps her father with his courier service business or goes home to help her nieces.

Hobbs, who is the salutatorian of her class, said she tries to be as productive as possible, while also supporting other people.

She said when she sees younger students at school, she always waves and asks them how they’re doing. She helps people with their struggles, and as captain of the varsity softball team, she keeps team members’ spirits up.

“I think that’s what I’m proudest of: that I was able to put myself aside to help other people,” she said when reflecting on her four years of high school.

Hobbs, 17, of New London, plans to go to the University of Connecticut at Avery Point for multi-disciplinary engineering. She said she will be the first person in her close-knit family to go to college.

Hobbs said college was never an option for members of her family, who had to get a job right after high school, so she’s excited to be able to choose the future she wants and get the college experience she sees in the movies ― and her family is too.

She said Higher Edge, a New London organization that works with students, helped her through the process of applying for college, and she now will be able to help her nieces when they later apply for college.

Hobbs in 2022 received the Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship, which she said showed her hard work does pay off and she is motivated to continue to work hard.

Once she graduates from college, she plans on obtaining her real estate license, so she’ll have a dual income, and to work in helicopter engineering. She either wants to work in mechanical engineering, or go into materials engineering to make a sustainable material for helicopters that is easily recyclable and could be used on cars.

She said she is environmentally conscious and tries not to use much water or run her car for too long. She said the community pulling together will help decrease natural disasters and global climate change, so she tries to do the best she can.

Hobbs, who interned at Electric Boat last summer and now is doing work-based learning there, said the community at Electric Boat has been very welcoming and encouraged her to ask questions.

She said when she was growing up, she was really creative and played with LEGOs.

Hobbs remembers first being drawn to engineering when her mother gave her an old book, with a mustard yellow cover. Though the book didn’t have a flashy cover, Hobbs said she was excited to read it because her family didn’t have money to buy books and this was her own book.

Hobbs said the book was about architecture and she enjoyed the creativity, drawing and math aspects of it. The back of the book had referrals for other books, including some about engineering. She began asking people about engineering. When she found out it’s heavily math-related, she was excited because she always did well in math.

She volunteers with the National Honor Society and Interact Club.

She was one of the founding members of Students for Recovery, a group focused on support, awareness and advocacy for people with substance use disorder. She said the group focuses on the message that people can come back from their struggles and addictions.

Mechanical Design and Engineering Department Head Thomas Allen said Hobbs has taken advantage of every opportunity the program has offered her and has a bright future ahead of her.

Chris Jones, department head for Guest Services Management, who coached Hobbs in softball, said Hobbs cares about her school and her class. He said Hobbs is not afraid to speak her mind in a positive way, always carries herself in a professional manner, and is a good student.

“You’re not going to find a harder working, more caring student than Camryn,“ Jones said.

Hobbs said she wants to give other students the message to stay focused and driven, and they will succeed too.

“It’s not going to be perfect all the time, but if you see the goal at the end and you continue to see it and continue to keep that in your mind, it makes it easier to go through all the hard stuff and makes the reward sweeter because you know how hard you worked,” she said.

k.drelich@theday.com