By Christopher Ramirez

Erik Maza says he didn’t want to take his parents’ career path. To him, their engineering careers offered little appeal and no excitement.

But he did admire his father’s flair for storytelling, and that is what stirred him to pursue an education in journalism.

“He is good at taking control of a conversation and being entertaining,” Maza said of his father. “He loves being in the center of a room.”

Maza, along with his parents, Carlos Antonio and Sonia, immigrated from Cuba to Alva, Fla., where his grandfather lived, in April 1998 to seek better opportunities. He spoke no English and struggled to adjust in school. Yet through the help of television and reading, Maza honed his adopted language, and when the family later moved to Sarasota, he was placed in a program for gifted students.

The 22-year-old, now a senior majoring in English and journalism at the University of Florida, spent the first six months of last year studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain. The pulse of Spain’s second-largest metropolis reminded Maza of Havana.

Maza is set to graduate in May and will take on his first postgraduation assignment as an intern at the Orlando Sentinel. He aspires to run a magazine or work as a foreign correspondent.