Learning to Love His Outlier Identity

Grimsley High graduate Saul Sanabria-Sosa heads to N.C. State University embracing both his culture and his studious nature.

Saul Sanabria-Sosa has always felt a little bit different.

He wrote about it in his college essay. In it, he explains why “La Familia Peluche” was one of his favorite TV shows growing up. In English, it’s translated, “The Plush Family,” and it’s about an outlandish and dysfunctional family that dresses in cartoonish, plush clothing. The daughter, Bibi, is considered the “weird” one and everyone makes fun of her.

But Sanabria-Sosa says Bibi is the “normal” one.

“She is kind and thoughtful, while it seems like everyone else is rude and selfish. She is ridiculed by everyone in the show for being this way when, in reality, in any other setting, she would be adored,” he wrote.

He often feels like Bibi.

The studious Grimsley High graduate, whose parents are from Mexico, will be the first in his immediate family to attend college. He will attend N.C. State University and plans to study mechanical engineering. In a family of extroverts, he is quiet and prefers books over parties. His father, who owns a landscaping business, enjoys working outside with his hands. Sanabria- Sosa prefers completing his school work indoors.

“I enjoy the feeling you get after, like, doing good on a test or finishing all of your assignments,” he says. “There’s no stress, just peace of mind. I just feel good.”

Even outside his family, Sanabria-Sosa sometimes felt out of place among other Mexican students too.

“I know I’m not the only Bibi in my community,” he says. “College will hopefully help me find other people just like me.”

Straddling the cultural fence

Sanabria-Sosa’s parents left their hometowns because of limited opportunities. His mother is from the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca, while his father is from Michoacan in west-central Mexico. They met in the U.S. and started a family. His father also started a landscaping company.

Sanabria-Sosa attended Brown Summit Middle School for the academically gifted. While he learned a lot academically, he felt out of place because of the lack of other students like him, culturally.

“I felt a little bit like an outlier in that school,” he says.

When it came time to make a choice about high school, Sanabria-Sosa decided against the Early College at Guilford or the IB program at Grimsley. He wanted to be part of a larger, more diverse student body. He thought it might be easier to fit in. He excelled academically his first two years, then dual enrolled at GTCC-Jamestown to start taking college-level courses.

Despite his academic success, things weren’t as easy socially. Unlike Bibi, he wasn’t happy being an outlier.

“I tried to be more like the other Mexican kids in my school,” he wrote in his college essay. “I would copy the way they dressed, copy their haircut, and copy their careless attitudes. I tried to make it seem that I didn’t care about school.”

In time, he realized that trying to pretend to be someone different made him even more uneasy.

“I had to stop with this facade,” he wrote.

While he may have felt awkward socially and struggled internally with it, Grimsley counselor Kristina Zemaityte says he came across extremely confident and kind. She met him on her very first day at the school, and he made a strong impression on her.

“He wasn’t just academically sharp, though that was clear from how confidently he spoke about his classes and goals,” she says. “What struck me more was how kind and approachable he was. He welcomed me without any hesitation.”

Zemaityte says Sanabria-Sosa spoke about his favorite subjects and goals so enthusiastically that she wanted to know more about him.  “Watching him grow even further during the year — whether it was presenting, leading a study group, or simply being a dependable brother or friend — was inspiring,” she says.

He’s not a standout just because he’s intelligent, she says. He stands out because he’s always innovating and ready to help others.

Finding his voice through a creative outlet

If there’s one space where Sanabria-Sosa is free to feel unselfconsciously Mexican and bookish, it’s TikTok.

After working for his father’s landscaping business one summer, Sanabria-Sosa decided he didn’t want his career to be working outdoors in the hot sun. It reinforced his commitment to his studies so that he could get into a good college and earn a living with his brain, not his hands. When his brother broke his foot one summer, Sanabria-Sosa found a way to earn some serious money. His brother needed assistance at home, so Sanabria-Sosa researched ways to make money online. He stumbled upon content creation, posting comedic memes based on pop culture on TikTok. He also creates a lot of sports-related content, especially soccer.

“I just started posting stupid videos. After a couple of days, I hit a mill (1 million views), and it was, like, a lot of people seeing my videos. It kind of brought me joy,” he says.

As his viewership increased, he began posting more videos. He prefers to stay anonymous and doesn’t share his TikTok handle, even with friends. He gets paid per 1,000 views. He posts most days and as of late May, had more than 800,000 followers. He’s made significantly more money than he would have working for his father’s landscaping company. In fact, he saves most of his earnings and used some of it to buy his first house shortly after his 18th birthday.

The investment will provide him with passive income while he’s in college. Scholarships will cover most of his expenses, and his savings will fund the rest of it. His parents are astounded that he’s been able to make so much money just being on the phone in his room. Despite their differences, he feels supported by his family because they let him make his own decisions and help him in different ways. His mother helped him through the process of purchasing his house and his father has helped him renovate it.

As for his conflicting feelings about being different from his family and other Mexican teens, he’s come to terms with it.

At the end of his college essay, he wrote: “I love my culture, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I have learned that being the Bibi in my family is fine.”