Azra Kapetanovic remembers people constantly running from place to place in Prijedor, Bosnia, during the early 1990s.

When the Bosnian conflict began in 1992, she said members of her community were living day-to-day, just trying to survive.

"There were days when 100 people would be sleeping in one house, not even sleeping, just sitting and waiting for the night to be over," the 24-year-old electrical engineering senior said of her memories from the conflict in the country now known as Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Kapetanovic, who will graduate from MSU on Saturday, left her hometown with her family in December 1994 and arrived in the United States in April 1995.

She said she enjoys MSU because she is seeing things from a different perspective.

"In Bosnia, there's the same culture," Kapetanovic said. "At the campus, the entire world is here. You name it, you'll find someone from that country."

Xiaobo Tan, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has known Kapetanovic for a little more than a year, and he said he's quite impressed with her work ethic and her proactivity.

"I don't see a lot of engineering students that can be so dedicated," Tan said. "Not just her technical ability, but the way she solves issues for the team and the way she communicates with her peers is pretty smooth."

When the Bosnian conflict — which stemmed from tension among Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats following the 1990 breakup of Yugoslavia — first broke out, Kapetanovic said she didn't understand, because she was young at the time.

"At first, everybody was in shock," Kapetanovic said. "Nobody knew what was happening."

The cultural tensions made it hard for Kapetanovic to attend school, she said.

"For a couple of days, I tried running to school," Kapetanovic said. "Then it started to change, people wouldn't talk to me. I couldn't believe it."

Kapetanovic said she went to school one day for a couple of hours and returned home to find her neighborhood completely empty.

"I didn't know what happened," she said. "I thought my parents were killed, but they came back that night."

She said someone had come to their neighborhood and told people to go to a United Nations camp, where the refugees would be transported to a safe place. But the information given to people was false — Serbian soldiers robbed houses while the residents were gone, she said.

The people were left in the camp for more than a month, she said.

"If you had a cousin, you could stay with them, but you couldn't go back to your home," Kapetanovic said.

When Kapetanovic came to the United States, she didn't know a word of English.

"It took me about two years to be able to understand and be able to respond to people without pauses," she said. "I was very shy. When you don't know something you are very quiet, and I was afraid to speak at first."

She said she would write down words she didn't understand in school, and when she got home she would try to translate the words.

Making the transition to the United States was very difficult, because it meant adapting to a new culture, new standards and new laws, she said.

Kapetanovic's family now lives in Athens, Mich., and her brother, Haris, is an MSU sophomore.

After graduating, Kapetanovic plans to continue her education in one of MSU's graduate degree programs.

Because of her experiences and her time at MSU, Kapetanovic said she's grown as a person — one who is not going to let her past affect her future.

"I'm glad (the war) is over," she said. "It made me a much stronger person. I can have a lot of pain and struggle and be able to survive."