As soon as Bryan Sam’s mother was sent back to Honduras, he knew it was time to focus on graduating high school so he could make her proud.
Sam, who is graduating this week from Clark-Pleasant Academy, admits he didn’t take school seriously when he was at Whiteland Community High School.
“High school, you’re a kid. Life was different at that time,” Sam said.
But then his mother was deported to Honduras when Sam was a junior, and that put everything in perspective, he said.
“When she left, I finally realized that I had to do it. I had to make it on my own, some way, somehow,” Sam said.
“When I came here, I finally started changing the people I was (hanging) around with, and I started hanging with the right people, the smart people, the people who really want to do something with their life.”
He met a friend that he wants to open a business with after college, Sam said. The two want to build smart homes and also handle landscaping for homeowners.
Sam’s main motivation is to show his mother that he can be successful, and he feels added pressure since he is the youngest in his family, he said.
“I know that my mom wanted at least one of her kids to graduate, at least one of her kids to go to college,” Sam said. “Now that I’ve graduated, I want to do better for her.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”The Sam File” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Name: Bryan Sam
Age: 18
Residence: Greenwood
Graduating from: Clark-Pleasant Academy
Future plans: Attend Ivy Tech Community College and study business administration and computer programming
[sc:pullout-text-end]
