When Leo Roytman was 9 years old, he and his parents and 5-year-old sister, Toma, immigrated to the United States from their homeland of Kazakhstan.

Brittaney Talbot was doing her homework when the phone rang. She was stitching together a kangaroo.

As he went down the hill past Towers dorms, Folz began to panic. Suddenly Route 195 seemed as difficult and fragile to commandeer as the streets of Baghdad. Then he saw a police car swing a U-turn and proceed to follow the silver bullet.

His outlook belies the difficulty that he has faced, circling the globe from his home in Malaysia in pursuit of an education. After all, balance is what Ling considers the crowning achievement of his academic career.