she is a prime example of why i have NO PITY FOR THE LAZY!!!
Posted on 09/25/2010 5:03:14 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Liz Murray's story of her journey from starving as a child in the Bronx to Ivy League success has become an American bestseller
A woman who overcame tremendous odds to go from "homeless to Harvard" has turned her life story into an American bestseller.
Liz Murray, 29, rose from some of New York's meanest streets to graduate from the Ivy League and has become an international speaker. But some of her earliest memories are of her parents spending their welfare payments on cocaine and heroin when she and her sister were starving: "We ate ice cubes because it felt like eating. We split a tube of toothpaste between us for dinner."
When she became homeless at 16, as well as stealing food she would shoplift self-help books and study for exams in a friend's hallway. Now Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard, has burst on to the New York Times bestseller list. Hailed as a "white-knuckle account of survival", it is to be published in Britain in January.
Born in the Bronx, Liz watched her parents mainlining coke all day. "Both my parents were hippies. By the time the early 1980s came around and I'd been born, their disco dancing thing had become a drug habit," she recalls.
She talks frequently about how much she loved them and how much they loved her, how they were highly intelligent but rendered hopeless at parenting by their drug dependence and consequent poverty. She remembers her mother stealing her birthday money, selling the television, and even the Thanksgiving turkey a church had given them,
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
While I am glad she seems to have gotten herself out of a terrible situation and was able to get an ivy league degree, it makes me want to go and tell my neighbors they should become drug addicts, homeless, and steal their daughter’s money. You see, they are a middle class family that couldn’t afford to send their daughter to Harvard. The girl was third in her class, had excellent recommendations and SAT scores, and is a genuinely good person. She was accepted to Harvard but offered no scholarship money. Most of the scholarship applications she wanted to fill out excluded her from consideration— she’s white, has two parents, and doesn’t live in the inner city. Well, come to think of it, she did receive some local scholarship money from various groups but not enough. She volunteered about 15 hours a week at a local veterinarian’s office on top of school, homework, and sports because she wants to be a Veterinarian. She filled out financial aid forms. But once again, having two parents that work doesn’t help in getting financial aid, even though they make nowhere near enough for Harvard. Her bill for Harvard would have been about $30,000 a year AFTER financial aid. She decided to go to SUNY Binghamton, a good state school a couple of hours a way. I told her it was probably for the better, and she has a 4.0 after two semesters.
Very nice article. Thank you!
Did anyone tell her Dad you can get a library card and actually borrow books from the library? No stealing required.
You nailed it. I was thinking the same thing. Power to that lady and her achievements, but her PARENTS / FAMILY gets rewarded by Ivy Liberal League out of pity, whereas the many, many middle class families who work hard and play by the rules, making sacrifices all along the way, whose kid gets accepted to Harvard the hard way, can’t afford to send them there.
I can think of many families I know whose child was accepted at an elite college but no or very little scholarship money was offered.
Up close, Harvard looks Big for having helped this girl. Step farther back, and you see an actual selfishness: Harvard helping the flashy story for itself while not backing the quiet, hardworking bright kids who get accepted through grades, hard work, and community service.
she is a prime example of why i have NO PITY FOR THE LAZY!!!
“It paid for all her expenses while she went there. She did it herself which is more than most people her age do.”
She did it herself, when somebody else paid all her expenses?
Some people go to their first class not knowing how they’re going to eat that day, or how they’re going to scrape rent together.
Didn’t you read the article? She and her sister had to eat ice chips because it ate like food. She was homeless, slept on buses or wherever she could find a place to sleep. She would get to school early and stay late so people would not find out. I am disgusted with some of the posters on this site. I thought you all were better than this. Just why did you make that insane comment about others not having anything to eat? She was one of them. She finished a year of school in a semester so she could graduate as early as possible. I am ashamed of some of the posters on FR. I thought you all were better than this. Guess I was wrong.
She was not lazy. She finished 2 years of school in 2 semesters. She had to write an essay explaining why she should be awarded a scholarship. She won. Had you rather have some less deserving person win it? Her message to people is you can obtain your dream but you have to work for it. She did not ask to be born into the family she was born into but she became a better person than her parents. According to some of you, if a teen has drugged out parents, then that is what she should become too. The way some of you talk you were born to perfect families. Well that is not true of a lot of people and they deserve to be better people.
Well, she'd better not warn teenagers to resist sex before marriage, or she'll end up like Christine O'Donnell -- ridiculed by all the movers and shakers. sarc/off
Seriously, it is interesting that this young lady is lauded for having eventually finishing her Harvard education (on full scholarship), but Christine O'Donnell is reviled for taking 9 years to finish hers and having a hard time paying back her college loans afterward.
One, good for her for making something of herself. It’s a good story and I’m glad to hear something of the sort.
Two, I’m not going to be bitter about her or her opportunities. She grabbed the bull by the horns and made something of it, something that can’t be said of everyone offered the same shot.
I’m one of the folks who could basically write his ticket to go wherever he wanted for school. I worked hard, earned it, and in the end, paid for it myself. Could I afford Harvard? No. Why would I be bitter about it? It’s not the dollar value of the school that matters but the education, and that costs about 10 bucks plus late fees at the library.
But then I’m a little different then most folks. Thanks for standing up for her, ma’am.
you missed my point... she worked her butt off and she proved there should be no pity for the lazy!!!
“I thought you all were better than this.”
Maybe some of us weren’t born with silver spoons in our mouths, and are just a little harder to impress.
And well deserved. Looking at the major economic and political problems today, there is usually a Harvard graduate or Ivy Leaguer at the center of it.
“She had to write an essay explaining why she should be awarded a scholarship.”
Gee, that must have been a real hardship. Wrote a single essay for a scholarship to Harvard. I’d have written an essay a day for enought money to eat.
“The way some of you talk you were born to perfect families.”
Actually, that’s what you sound like.
Here’s a clue: you’re not going to impress people who got through college without a scholarship by holding up someone who cruised through without having to sweat food and shelter.
Because they didn't.
They loved themselves, they loved drugs but they didn't love her.
Very few children or spouses of the addicted want to face that. Understandable I suppose.
Thank you, thank you. I was beginning to think I was one of a very few who actually read her story and thought she was a role model others would want to copy. Work hard, study hard and you will achieve your dream. When I read some of these comments, I thought I was over at that other unnamed site. I have never read such comments about someone who was homeless, on her own, and made a much better life. How many others in her circumstances would work as hard as she did to get that education?
“What planet are you living on?”
The one that has a lot of poor people.
“This girl was homeless.”
Lots of people have been homeless.
“Born with a silver spoon? Where did you read that?”
Looks like you’re not paying much attention to what I write. I didn’t say *she* was born with a silver spoon; I said some people are.
“She ate ice chips when younger because that is all they had.”
Lots of people have been hungry.
“I was born on a working farm.”
Nice for you. When I was five, I got sunstroke working in somebody else’s field. If not for the Grace of Our Lord, I’d probably have died.
“That is what we survived on during the winter.”
In the immortal word of Monty Python, “Luxury.”
All too often, when a person praises something or abhors something, to which praise I assign an arbitrary value of 100, and somebody else comes along and says “No, that’s about a 25,” the first person reacts as though they’d said the value was zero.
She had a hard time.
Lots of people have a hard time. I’ve known a bunch.
She went the right way instead of the wrong way. Great. Good on her.
She went to Harvard.
Okay, but she’d have been better off at a community college in Texas. Better education.
She did it herself?
No, she had a scholarship. I know a number of people who really did do it themselves, with no help from the NY Slimes or anybody else. To say she did it herself when all she had to do was write an essay demeans the struggle of those who really did do it by themselves.
I’m impressed.
That makes one of us. Don’t know what planet you are on, but this impresses me. Like I said, I don’t understand this bitterness to those who were offered a scholarship.
You sound envious that she got to Harvard, and you did not. Why do you care so much?
“I don’t understand this bitterness to those who were offered a scholarship.”
Really? How nice that you are sinless.
I’m not bitter about people who get scholarships. I am irritated with those here who deride disagreement with slurs like, “Don’t know what planet you are on,” and “You sound envious.”
“You sound envious.”
No I don’t. That’s just an attempt to “win” the argument by discrediting your opponent, without discussing the issue on its merits.
Here’s the thing: There are lots of men who had it rougher and worked harder. I’m impressed by them. What is so impressive about going to college on a scholarship? Or is it impressive because she’s a woman?
“she got to Harvard, and you did not.”
(Mirth) I was accepted by every institution of higher learning to which I ever applied. Way back then I knew that Harvard was a sewer. Even if the NY Slimes had offered me a scholarship to Harvard, I’d still have chosen to work my way through a better school.
Interesting that your post contains nothing but slurs. No reasoned arguments to make?
“Why do you care so much?”
Me care? I made a casual comment, and have since only been trying to reason with people whose sole argument seems to be, “If you don’t agree with me, you’re a bad, bad person.” I’d say it’s the people that keep coming after me who can’t deal with the fact that some people disagree with them.
If I am bitter about anything, it’s about the huge waste of human capital represented by affirmative action, which wrenched opportunities out of the hands of more intelligent, more talented white men so that they could be given to women and minorities.
(And don’t start that crap about women and minorities being just as intelligent and talented. Those that were intelligent and talented succeeded on their own; it was precisely those that were not who were affirmative-actioned into slots they could never have earned their way into.)
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