Joseph Duong

Hometown: Wichita, KS

Major: Interdisciplinary Computing with Biology

Next Steps: Baylor Law School

Who has been one of your greatest guides at St. Lawrence? How did they guide you?
I've had no shortage of great guides at St. Lawrence, but by far the most influential to me has been Father Mitchel. At the beginning of my senior year, he became my spiritual director, and throughout these past several months he's revealed to me the incredible tenderness of his heart as a father. If ever my relationship with Christ presents a fork in the road, Fr. Mitchel always encourages the one less traveled. To quote him, "Where you can be right, I invite you to be wrong. Where you are in, I invite you to be out." It's always through his own example that he's shown me how to live, though he's probably never consciously done so. He's shown me the beauty that comes with a life of total bare-bones honesty, a life in favor of freedom over control, and (as may be hard to believe by those who know him), a life of listening more than speaking. Everything I've learned and received from him can be summed up in his decisive answer to me when I came to him in a particularly low moment of my life: "Joseph when it comes down to it, if you want to know who you are, you just need to answer two questions: Who do you love, and Who loves you?"