USD Magazine Summer 2008

[ o v e r d r i v e ]

GO-GETTER

THE

Hiermona Tesfami cael scarcely has t ime to breathe. And that ’s just the way she l ikes i t .

b y J u l e n e S n y d e r

Later, there’ll be plenty of time for fun. Not so much right now, but sometime in the future there may well be enough unscheduled minutes to watch an entire television show . And yes, one day it could very well come to pass that Spring Break might involve a tropical paradise. Perhaps a time will come when eight hours of sleep will not sound like an impossible dream. Someday, maybe, but not now. And probably not next year either. Or the year after that. Could be the case in three years or so, but no prom- ises. It’s just that at this moment, and for the foreseeable future, Hier- mona Tesfamicael ’09 is busy. For one thing, she’s actually supposed to be Class of 2010, but Tesfami- cael — a double major (finance and business administration) with a minor in accounting — is in overdrive, on track to graduate a full year early. “My friends always say, ‘You always walk so fast, and every time I see you, you never have time to talk!’”The 20-year-old shrugs. What can you do? “But when I’m studying, I do keep my AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) on. I’m a good multi-tasker. I keep in contact with my friends that way.” A strikingly pretty young woman, Tesfamicael’s smile lights up her face. While her days at USD have been jam-packed, she relishes exceed- ing the challenges she’s set for herself, not least because of the purpose that powers all her hard work. “I want to help my family back home,” she says with quiet certitude. Though Tesfamicael was born in Queens, New York, her mother and father come from Eritrea, an East African country bordered by Sudan and Ethiopia. “My parents came to New York in 1979 with nothing, and they worked from the ground up.” Each of them left large numbers of siblings behind in the troubled country. Tesfamicael has more than 100 Eritrean cousins — many of whom she got to know over an extended visit one childhood summer — and their living situation in the politically volatile region worries her. A desire to ensure her extended family’s well-being, coupled with the example provided by her parents, is what fuels her breakneck pace. “When you come from nothing, it can’t get any worse,” she says. “The only place you can go is up, and that’s pretty much how my folks saw it. They took every opportunity they saw in America to make their life bet- ter. That’s why I want to help back home, because family is all you have.” She remains extremely close to her parents — who live in Chula Vista, Calif. — and sees her father, a radiation therapist, and her mother, a nurse, as role models. “The first thing they did when they got established was send money back home,” she recalls. Tesfamicael hopes to get to the point where she too is helping those relatives as much as she can. The need among her Eritrean kinsmen is great: for

homes, for better amenities, for an education, for a better life. But first, she’s got a few other things on her plate. For example, in addition to 19 units worth of classes she’s taking this semester, she’s got tutoring, lab hours, working at the United Front Multicultural Cen- ter and serving as president of the Resident Hall Association. “I’ve been a hard worker since kindergarten,” she says. “I always looked up to my parents and would see them working hard, so I work hard too.” In high school, Tesfamicael took Advanced Placement classes in addition to belonging to “countless organizations” such as the ASB, the Black Student Union and MEChA. She was vice president of her junior class, tutored younger students through the YMCA and tutored her peers in algebra. “I love interacting with people,” she says, flashing that killer smile. “I like to give them the go-getter attitude that our family gave us. I have a passion for working with people.” That’s a sentiment that’s soundly seconded by Rick Hagan, USD’s direc- tor of housing. He gets together with Tesfamicael every week in her capac- ity as president of the Residence Hall Association. “I always look forward to it,” he says. “She is so positive — even with her course-load and the seri- ousness with which she takes academics — that at the end of our meet- ings, I always wind up being more energized than before.” Tesfamicael wound up at USD because of the communal environ- ment and small class size. Though she lives with a pair of roommates in the Bahia apartments, it wasn’t necessarily her parents’ first choice for her to live on campus. “My mom definitely wanted me to stay at home,” she recalls. “It was hard for my mom and dad to understand why I want- ed to live on campus.” But in truth, she had good reason. “For one thing, I don’t drive. I have my job here, my home here, my classes here and my friends here. I don’t need to go off-campus. And if I do, my friends and family will take me.” While she spends much of her rare downtime with family, she can foresee a time in the future when she’d enjoy traveling. Of course, there’s also grad school to be considered — she plans to pursue an MBA — and then a career, and perhaps, one day, a family. Though she says her dream job would be in human resources for a medical or edu- cational firm, she also thinks that it would be fun to open a restaurant with her mom, serving traditional Eritrean food. Oh, and being a CEO is also at the top of her wish-list for the future. One thing for certain is that right now, for Hiermona Tesfamicael, there’s no time for chit-chat. She’s got to get moving if she’s ever going to finish all she needs to do. There will be time to rest later. Much later.

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