Anna Touch refuses to let opposing forces stop her from pushing forward

She walks through the hall with a smile on her face and books in her hand. She looks like any other, happy, bright-eyed student. She looks like a student with a bright future ahead of her. Nobody would ever guess what she hides behind her smile.

“You can never let them see you weak,” Anna Touch, junior, said. From the time she was a little girl she has been taught by her grandmother that the only way to succeed in life is to remain strong and not to make any excuses. Touch has lived by her grandmother’s words her entire life, but she didn’t always accept them the way she does now.

“When I was little I used to think she didn’t love me,” Touch said regarding her grandmother. But now she sees that her grandmother is only trying to protect her. She says that her grandmother wants her to be strong and for that she sees her as the father she never had.

Touch’s father has never been a part of her life, having left her and her mother before she was born. She says that sometimes she feels like a piece of her is missing, but then she remembers that he left. That he made a choice, not thinking about how it would affect her. “You’re entitled to be a father, but you have to try to be a dad.”

Because of the fact that her father left, Touch has always been close to her mother. Not only because her father is out of the picture, but also because her mother is deaf and mute.

“It’s like we have our own language,” Touch said. She’s able to understand her mom through certain facial expressions. Her mother is her backbone, the one person for whom she would do anything to make her smile. Despite certain situations in the past, Touch and her family continue to move forward.

“My goal in life is to be able to support my mom and grandma and give back to them what they gave to me,” Touch said. Her family is what drives her to do so well in school.

They’re the two people who gave her a foundation in life. The ones who pick her up when she needs it the most, despite the problems in their own lives. The people who taught her that education is the key to a bright future. Touch said, “My grandma always tells me that education is the one thing people can’t take away from you.”

Knowing how important education is, Touch sees herself 10 years from now in graduate school working to become a bio engineer. She’ll be stable in her life and working towards another big goal. She’s going to find a cure for cancer and rid the world of disease. In those days she’ll look back on her life, and smile at the people and the circumstances that gave her the strength to follow her dreams. And she’ll realize that her strength her mother and grandmother gave to her was the one thing that kept her going. The one thing that helped her succeed all her life.