Across an ocean, finding his dream
In 11th grade, when many high-school students are working on college applications, juggling extracurriculars, and taking multiple AP courses, Suan Tuang was doing the same. But at 16, Tuang was also striving to learn English, settle into a new home in a new country, and help his family navigate the financial straits of joblessness in the midst of the economic crisis.“As a family, we were really struggling,” Tuang says. “We thought maybe we made the wrong decision: How long was this going to last?”Tuang left Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) with his parents, two older sisters, and a younger brother in 2008, just two years before he entered MIT. He came from a rural village, called Tedim, that had few college graduates, and where he lived in a house with intermittent electricity and no running water. But Tuang now expects to graduate from MIT with a chemistry degree in June,...