Celebrating Students ’13: Michael Conrad

You can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where you came from. In my case I hadn’t met my entire family. My mother IMG_1608was an immigrant; she came to America from a poor Central American Country. At age 16 she entered high school not being able to speak a word of English. She graduated and went on to college. Coming from Honduras she was raised in a strict home that provided her with a “family over everything” attitude, as well as a mentality to work as hard as you can for everything and to appreciate all the opportunities given to you. Before embarking on my college journey, I felt it was necessary for me to find my roots and return to the place my mother and grandmother and aunts and uncles came from so I could proceed to make my family proud and return to Honduras a successful man. Seeing the family I had only seen in pictures and heard over the phone was almost as fulfilling as going on a missionary trip, or working at a soup kitchen. When I got there I had no idea what to expect, but when I left I realized what was expected of me and how much family I had to make proud. I left Honduras with so much motivation, so much drive to succeed in all aspects of my life. My twenty-one day trip was more of a realization than it was a vacation, and I will remember it for the rest of my life.