Rehan Staton offers a feel-good story that feels so good, it can almost make you forget about the pandemic.
He’s a former garbage collector …
Who got into Harvard Law School …
The video of him opening the email congratulating him on his acceptance to one of the nation’s most storied law schools went viral. Um, big shock …
The 24-year-old Maryland man endured much in his journey. His mother left the country when he was 8 years old, leaving his father to take care of him and his brother.
Soon afterward, his father lost his job, throwing the family into hard times. His father soon found himself working three jobs to make ends meet. Staton went to school hungry and unable to focus. His grades dropped.
But his father found him a free tutor and Staton rallied. In high school, he trained to be a boxer, but he developed tendonitis in his shoulders, ending that dream. And his dream of going to college derailed, too. All schools rejected him.
He took a job for a sanitation firm, and his fellow workers encouraged him to chase his dreams. He got accepted into Bowie State College and then the University of Maryland.
Upon graduation, he applied to a number of prestigious law schools, such as University of Southern California, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania as well as Harvard. He got into all of them. He chose Harvard, his dream school.
Seeing the acceptance “was the greatest moment of my life,” he told NBC News.
Yes, time for some Kleenex.
