Salvador Lopez goes to sleep early most nights. By eight or nine o’clock he is in bed, slumbering for the night and getting ready to do it all over again.
He wakes up every morning at 4 a.m. to get his sisters up to cross from Matamoros into Brownsville. He drops his younger sister off at Porter High School, then his older sister at the ITEC campus for work at a manufacturing job.
After that, Lopez is off to Texas Southmost College to take on a busy day. He is studying to become an educator, hoping to share his love for history with future students of his own at the 8th to 12th level.
“I chose TSC because it’s close to my family from Matamoros and here in Brownsville,” Lopez said. “I’m close by home and I don’t have to go somewhere else. I can keep being with my family while furthering my education. I just want to make my family proud.”
Lopez said he got deep into history starting with a PBS show called “Liberty’s Kids.’ The program helped him develop a love and interest in American history at the genesis of the nation.
As he grew into a college education, he also learned about the History of TSC’s Fort Brown Campus and the Mexican American War. There is no better place for a student to learn about history than where the land and sea meet the border. The campus is the site of some historic battles where Mexican and American armies wrestled for positioning and drew the borders, we know today.
Now he lives and breathes history…spending free time in museums and chatting with his instructors. When you get him going on history, he can sound like an encyclopedia, but he is multi-faceted for sure.
“Sal is an amazing student here at TSC,” Jamie Saenz said. “He demonstrates leadership, dedication and strives for success. As a student he has always performed his best. We have made this club a big success because of his leadership and guidance. The love for history has grown since joining the History Stings Club.”
He started his own club on campus, the Gaming Club which meets on Friday afternoons. He is also a part of the History Club and Unknown Connections at TSC.
Students are probably familiar with him as well because he spends his work-study hours walking around with a phone filming TikToks and other content as a student work with Multimedia Media Marketing or setting up branding materials for campus events.
His days are jammed packed, but he loves every minute of the college experience. He knows that his higher education is the pathway to a better life, full of opportunities that were amplified at TSC.
“College is going to give me a better opportunity out in the world, to get a job in what I pursuit,” he said.
