Meet the Engineering PhD Student Who Isn’t a Rapper But Is Pretty Good At Juggling

You may know of Clyde Kelly, the Penn student “famous” for rapping who was a consultant at McKinsey & Company before enrolling at Wharton for an MBA. However, some talented Penn students prefer to fly under the radar, such as Josh Ross, an PhD student in Chemical Engineering. Ross isn’t a rapper—in fact, he has no musical ability whatsoever— but claims there is something that makes him stand out slightly among his peers.

“I juggle,” Ross says. “I juggle kind of well.”

Ross began his hobby at the age of eight, when he received a juggling set for his birthday. It took a while for the skills to set in, but after a year he was able to successfully juggle three balls for fifteen seconds. According to his mother, Ross was a natural.

“I knew he had something when he could throw one ball in the air followed by another, catch a third, and throw it back up again before the others came down,” she said.

While juggling didn’t directly help him receive admission into the Chemical Engineering PhD program, Ross never gave it up, and is now able to juggle up to four irregular objects. After graduating, he plans to continue research, but will still juggle on the side. 

"It's a passion, really," he says. "And makes me the one of most interesting people in the school of engineering, I think."

Ross' fellow students are apparently unaware of his juggling skills, and unanimously believe the most interesting person in the school of engineering is the one who won the Guinness World Record for Most Consecutive Times Crossing the Street Without Checking for Oncoming Traffic earlier this year.