Pros Seng
By: Kayla Burchuk, Spotlight Editor
Issue date: 2/5/10 Section: Spotlight
It's hard not to love Pros Seng '10. Buoyant yet intense, Pros splits his time between pursuing his passions for both chemistry and modern dance. Never one to compartmentalize, Seng sat down with The Mac Weekly to discuss community medicine, creating with the body and integrating into the Twin Cities.
The Mac Weekly: You grew up in Portland [Oregon], but you were born in Southeast Asia. Where were you born?
Pros Seng: I was born in Thailand, in Nongchung [a refugee camp] right along the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Then I moved to Cambodia when I was about five, and then I moved to the United States November 1998, when I was around 11.
TMW: What do you remember from your childhood from that time?
PS: I remember a lot, I still do. I remember snippets of images. We have some photographs that we managed to save as we moved our lives around. These images always sort of bring me back to "what was I like as a child?" Of course it's a lot of tragedies. There are land mines everywhere outside of the camp. You have to go two or three miles to get your food so you would make that trek and you never know, the mines shift when it rains, so you never know the real way to get to your food. You see a lot of people with prosthetics, or just without hands or arms around But there are a lot of beautiful things that go on, too. It makes it a normal childhood somehow, even though it seems different.
TMW: Do you feel like your personal history influences the way you live your life, your personal experience in the world?
PS: I'm, I guess, pretty adaptable and very fluid in my thoughts and my interactions with people just because I've never had really a solid place that I grew up with. When I make friends I value them a lot because I've never been able to have some very solid friendships because of moving so much. So when I do have really solid friends I tend to be really obsessive about them, and I really care about them. And also just traveling a lot and not having some place permanent helps me see life in a very global perspective that I really appreciate now because everything is connected. It's always been hard for me in chemistry to do the micro things, like when you do the O-Chem [organic chemistry]. I really enjoy when it's big enough that I can see everything coming together.
The Mac Weekly: You grew up in Portland [Oregon], but you were born in Southeast Asia. Where were you born?
Pros Seng: I was born in Thailand, in Nongchung [a refugee camp] right along the border of Cambodia and Thailand. Then I moved to Cambodia when I was about five, and then I moved to the United States November 1998, when I was around 11.
TMW: What do you remember from your childhood from that time?
PS: I remember a lot, I still do. I remember snippets of images. We have some photographs that we managed to save as we moved our lives around. These images always sort of bring me back to "what was I like as a child?" Of course it's a lot of tragedies. There are land mines everywhere outside of the camp. You have to go two or three miles to get your food so you would make that trek and you never know, the mines shift when it rains, so you never know the real way to get to your food. You see a lot of people with prosthetics, or just without hands or arms around But there are a lot of beautiful things that go on, too. It makes it a normal childhood somehow, even though it seems different.
TMW: Do you feel like your personal history influences the way you live your life, your personal experience in the world?
PS: I'm, I guess, pretty adaptable and very fluid in my thoughts and my interactions with people just because I've never had really a solid place that I grew up with. When I make friends I value them a lot because I've never been able to have some very solid friendships because of moving so much. So when I do have really solid friends I tend to be really obsessive about them, and I really care about them. And also just traveling a lot and not having some place permanent helps me see life in a very global perspective that I really appreciate now because everything is connected. It's always been hard for me in chemistry to do the micro things, like when you do the O-Chem [organic chemistry]. I really enjoy when it's big enough that I can see everything coming together.
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