Where Carlos Perez-Heydrich grew up, everybody knew everybody.
No matter where Perez-Heydrich went in the Cuban communities of Miami, somebody knew his name. So when it came time to pick a college, he didn’t want to follow his family’s familiar footsteps and stay in South Florida.
Instead, the first-generation American wanted to create his own path. So he headed north.
Pushing himself out of his comfort zone, Perez-Heydrich will be joining the more than 4,000 incoming first-year students arriving at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this weekend.
“I kind of knew that if I really wanted to develop into the best person I could be, I had to go someplace where nobody knew my name,” he said. “This is a good stepping stone.”
Perez-Heydrich’s step out will be more than 800 miles from where his family established its roots. When his parents were babies, their families were exiled from Cuba, “and had to re-form their lives in Miami.
There, his father grew up to be an architect and his mother an accountant. They never moved from South Florida, living in a close-knit community.
“I love everything I had in Miami, but I wanted to see who I am,” he said. “If they don’t know you, they knew your bother. If they didn’t know your brother, they knew your sister. Everybody knew each other. I really wanted to find out who I am before I go back to that.
“I want to know I am the way I am because it’s me. I want to have my own history.”
In his quest to create his own path, Perez-Heydrich visited Chapel Hill for six weeks earlier this summer to partake in the annual Chancellor Science Scholars program, which will help him get a head start on science and math as he pursues a biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences.
With his sights already set on graduate school, Perez-Heydrich is interested in both research and the medical professions, and he is uncertain in which field he’ll ultimately pursue
For now, he is focused on first finding his place at Carolina.
“It’ll be finding my niche in this big place,” he said. “Maybe everybody doesn’t need to know my name, but I just need to have people who care about me and find that myself.”
By Brandon Bieltz, UNC Office of Communications and Public Affairs
This story is part of the “New Year, New Faces” series. As UNC-Chapel Hill prepares to begin a new fall semester, UNC Communications profiles some of the new Tar Heels who will be looking to innovate, educate, serve – and change the world
