Patrick Landrum is not a quitter.

After getting turned down for the same scholarship twice, Patrick Landrum applied again – and this time his persistence paid off. He is now the recipient of the CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement, making him one of the top 23 scholars in the CSU system.

The awards are given every year to CSU students with superior academic standing and community service experience. The students selected receive the award in the name of one of the donors. Landrum was selected to receive the William Randolph Hearst scholarship for $6,000, his first academic award.

“Not a lot of students win that kind of [award] and I was the scholar that’s been selected from Sac State,” Landrum said with a smile.

But winning the scholarship was not the only major challenge Landrum had to face.

At the age of seven, he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a mental health condition that hindered his communication and social skills, causing him to become isolated from his peers.

His diagnosis also affected him academically. He struggled to learn in school and was often confronted by frustrated teachers who did not know what to do about his behavior.

“[I] struggled with getting assignments done and not being focused enough in class,” Landrum recalled. “And teachers were thinking, ‘What are you doing? You’re supposed to be paying attention.’ But a lot of times, what teachers don’t know is that I have the tendency to be awkward and not a lot of teachers know how to handle me properly.”

Landrum also suffered from bullying in school and was picked on by students.

“I was actually bullied since I was in middle school and that was because there were seventh and eighth graders who liked to make fun of the little kids that are in sixth grade,” Landrum said. “It’s really hard, especially if they don’t really understand about my condition well.”

But Landrum was determined not to let his disability overcome his drive to succeed. He began asking questions in class, went to tutoring lessons and even worked on improving his communication skills with a speech therapist.

Soon, Landrum became a top scholar, graduating as the salutatorian of Golden Valley High School in Merced in 2009. He is now a double major in mathematics and economics at Sacramento State.

He credits his math professors, Andras Domokos and Thomas Schulte, whom he said helped him get to the next level in math.

“He was very helpful,” Schulte said. “He came to almost every office hour, and when I was busy with one student, he would actually help other students with the homework problems.”

He improved his social skills too.

In addition to being a successful student, Landrum is also involved in his community. He has served as the treasurer and vice president of several honor societies including the international honor society, Phi Theta Kappa.

He also serves the community by feeding the hungry through the Merced County Rescue Mission, an organization that provides food, clothing and shelter to the poor.

But what he enjoys most is working for the math department at Sac State, where he is currently a math tutor.

“It’s all about helping students with the subject that you’re good at – to help them make it more fun and not be scary,” Landrum said.

Landrum hopes to use his life as a teaching tool for other people who do not know anything about autism. He plans to educate people by “talking about his personal experience” while becoming an actuary: someone who studies financial services with risk management.

“Because [autism] is nothing to be ashamed of. It is something that is given to me as a gift and I’m going to use it to make a difference,” Landrum said.

As one of 400,000 students in the CSU system to win the award, Landrum faced incredible odds. The odds of winning in life are even slimmer. Landrum has beaten all of them.