Seventeen-year-old Quimari Carter sat during an assembly last month, thinking it wasn't likely he would be announced as one of De La Salle Institute's monthly student award recipients.

It didn't occur to the Beverly teenager who attends the Institute Campus for Young Men that he might receive the school's Meteor of the Month award even after a school official walked up and asked him directly if he won.

“I always tell myself it's not me,” Carter said.

To his surprise, Carter was awarded the honor for September.

He and junior Brittany Miller, of Chicago's Canaryville neighborhood, were named as part of a joint initiative between the school's campus ministry and its City of De La Salle student government. Miller is a student at Lourdes Hall Campus for Young Women.

Nominees are students who have demonstrated the school's principles of faith, community, service, social justice or association, according to the school.

Carter never expected to be recognized for his efforts, but he does work hard to help out the other students at the South Side Catholic secondary school.

The awards are giving to those who have achieved a “sense of selflessness” and act “without any expectation of a reward or thinking they're going to get anything,” Carter said.

This year, Carter began tutoring students from the school's football team who are struggling with their studies.

Carter said he respects their decision to want to better themselves and their willingness to overcome the sin of pride, an idea they have talked about in his religious studies classes.

“Pride makes us not want to admit that we need help or that there is a problem that needs to be solved,” Carter said.

Carter's packed school schedule includes physics first thing in the morning, math, religious studies, English and, at the end of the day, American politics. He also is on the robotics team, participates in French club and occasionally the chess club, and runs track.

Carter plans to study either computer science, computer engineering or electronic engineering. He has applied to Butler and Brown universities, as well as service academies, and hopes to attend one of those schools next year.

Nick Swedberg is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.