Sean O’Connor — social work graduate student

At 11 years old, Sean O’Connor’s life was uprooted when his family moved from the New York suburbs to Kansas City, where he was later diagnosed with depression. When O’Connor began high school, he fell into a dangerous cycle of substance abuse that he battled throughout his young adulthood.

Between losing friends to addiction, repeated trips to the hospital for alcohol poisoning and legal ramifications, O’Connor decided to turn his life around and return to college as a graduate student in social work at Texas State.

“I eventually decided to come to Texas State to share my story [and] see how I can help people,” O’Connor said. “I also need to tell people that that’s not all that I am. That’s a part of me, but I have other interests now. Drug use can be a part of identity, but it shouldn’t be the identity that one models itself after.”