His plan: help out supportive parents one day

“I’m the first one in my family to go to college. My parents are proud. They always tell me, ‘You have to get your education. You have to do something with your life.’ And I feel responsible. I feel like I owe that to them. They don’t have any Social Security or 401k. So once they get older, I’m the one who’s going to be helping them out. That’s very important to me. That’s one of the main reasons I’m doing this. I guess there’s a little pressure. But that just motivates me. 

“I didn’t take any student loans. My parents helped me out first semester. After that, I put my college education to the side and started working. I kept myself away from going out to certain places and having fun, or buying certain material things. I focused on stacking up my money to pay for school. And now I have enough money to not worry about bills and just focus on school.

“It wasn’t always easy getting to this point. During my teens, living in low-income, poverty-type places, you see and experience a lot of things. There were friends, people around me, just doing bad stuff and having to face horrible consequences with no way to turn back. But some people realize they don’t want that for themselves. They want to change. That was me. I guess I was blessed to learn from other people’s mistakes.”

— Francisco Acuna