Looking Beyond

"Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now." - Mattie Stepanek

Looking Beyond

"Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now." - Mattie Stepanek

How many of us know when our future began? The exact moment when our lives changed and ‘the future’ began? Or is it that the future never begins? For Leo Puente, a student at ALFA Foundation High School, the future came in his math honors class.

When Leo entered the honors group in his last semester he knew that the academic part would be difficult. Not only would he learn advanced matters of the subject, but he would do it in English, a language he did not master. That turned out to be the least of his problems.

By his own admission, Leo is a shy, quiet person. Talking to new people is not something that comes easily, much less trust them. When he arrived at the Foundation, although it cost him a lot of work, after months he managed to adapt to his group and make friends.

In the new honors group, however, his biggest obstacle was not the complicated mathematical problems: it was being, once again, surrounded by people he did not know. It was a struggle to feel stable again, to have the security to develop in class.

“It was a huge turning point.
I struggled a lot but decided not to give up. Thanks to that I continued. Now I see opportunities to learn in each person, to create relationships”.

“It was a huge turning point.
I struggled a lot but decided not to give up. Thanks to that I continued. Now I see opportunities to learn in each person, to create relationships”.

Thanks to his resilience, not only emotional but academic, a transformed future is what awaits Leo. Something as alien and distant as studying at the Tecnológico de Monterrey became an enormous possibility. He has already been accepted to study Chemical Engineering and is in the process of getting a scholarship.

And in spite of so much progress, his feet continue solidly on the ground. “After working and getting experience, I want to research or develop products to solve the pollution problem in our state,” says Leo, his mission to inspire others.

“Here they teach us to harvest what we sow, to see a future. It’s not about taking the opportunity and seeing what happens, but about taking it and deciding what to do with it.”

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ALFA Foundation Lifestyle Resilience