Best & Brightest: An Immigrant’s Story From a Community College to Cornell: It was a bit unsettling, all the moving around Julio Torres did as a child, from the Dominican Republic, to Puerto Rico, to live with a grandmother; to the United States, to live with an aunt. When he wasn’t moving, he was working: at an auto shop, then selling esquimalitos (homemade ice cream), then he worked jobs at a woodshop — all before the age 17.
All of that moving affected his friendships, but seemed to feed his curiosity and drive.
“I was the boy that would break the toys to see what was inside,” Julio Torres remembers. So when a family friend who was taking an architectural college course came to his home in the Dominican Republic with an illustration of a house, young Julio was amazed by his first introduction to architecture.
“I think that’s where it started,” says Julio, a Cornell University transfer student who graduated from Morrisville State College (MSC) with an associate degree in Architectural Studies & Design in May.
