Spotlight of the Week: Timothy Earl Sellers

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For those who don’t know him upon first glance, Timothy Earl Sellers might just seem like a typical Residential Assistant; happy, social, and ready to help. However, things didn’t start out that way for him.

Sellers was born on October 5, 1996 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Growing up, he was a very smart and quiet kid. Even though he had siblings, he often found himself spending a lot of time alone. From a very young age, he took interest into Anime. “Sometimes, it was all I watched,” says Sellers. Anime, along with Japanese/Chinese culture and customs, quickly became who he was as a person.

Because of his unique interests, he often felt ostracized from his peers. When he was at home, he felt misunderstood, but also because his older brother, and younger sister fit into crowds far better than he did. “I felt like an outcast in my own family sometimes, but it’s fine. You can’t choose your family, so you have to love them,” stated Sellers.

Home wasn’t the only place where Sellers felt like he couldn’t express himself. Life at West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi was complicated growing up because he didn’t get along with many people there either. “My interests were very different, and my classmates and I didn’t see eye to eye,” he states.  These differences resulted in him getting bullied. “It stinks, getting bullied, but at the end of the day I had to realize that I had to ignore it. Sticks and stones, sticks and stones,” he continued.

Unlike many people at that age, Sellers did not allow those negative events to affect him. By attending Alcorn State University (ASU) he found a new group of people that love him for exactly who he is. Attending college gave him the courage to fully be himself, and not care what others think about him. “It helps, that I have friends,” said Sellers. When coming to college, he found a group of people who have similar interest to his, and he couldn’t be happier.

He is currently a Residential Assistant at ASU who takes his job very seriously, but also uses it as a platform to help others. Sellers uses his job as a bridge to the students, and he tries his best to make everyone feel included because he remembers those painful feelings of ostracism that he felt not so long ago. Mentoring others is simply one of his many passions. Sellers advises the students to, “Continue to be who you are, and you’ll eventually find someone who has the same interests as you, I sure did.”