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Student collected garbage to pay for college. Now he’s headed to Harvard Law

Student collected garbage to pay for college. Now he’s headed to Harvard Law

Student collected garbage to pay for college. Now he’s headed to Harvard Law

After graduating high school, financial issues, illness and a major sports injury left 18-year-old Rehan Staton frustrated and exhausted as he worked to support his brother and father.

However, neither his family nor his co-workers at the Bates Trucking & Trash Removal sanitation company could watch him give up on himself

Today, Rehan is not only a college graduate, but is heading to Harvard Law School this fall.

Rehan was born and raised in Bowie, Maryland. “Life was pretty normal until I was eight years old,” Rehan says. During that time, his mother left his father and moved out of the country.

After she left, the previously stable household faced financial difficulties as Rehan’s father tried to raise his two sons on his own.

After years of private school and an otherwise “solidly middle class upbringing,” Rehan says, he and his older brother soon faced food insecurity while their father struggled to keep their house, often working two or even three jobs at a time to keep the bills paid.

By the 7th grade, Rehan’s academics had significantly suffered under the pressure of his difficulties at home. “I wasn’t eating meals every day and my dad was working all the time,” he recalled. “Sometimes there’d be no electricity at home.”

Despite his fractured home life, Rehan found some solace in athletics and trained in martial arts and boxing.

However, when a teacher recommended that Rehan be placed in remedial classes at school, his father stepped in. At a local community center, his father met an aerospace engineer who offered to tutor Rehan for free for the remainder of the school year.

Rehan continued to improve academically while training to be a professional boxer in high school.

However, his dreams were cut short when he suffered a double shoulder injury in the 12th grade. In a moment, his hopes of going pro after graduation were dashed.

He hurriedly applied to a number of colleges before the year was out but was rejected from every school he applied to. “That ended up just not working in my favor,” Rehan says. “So, I ended up going to work as a garbage man.”

His co-workers were often trying to figure out why he was there and would suggest he go to school or do something else. All of his colleagues at this time, with the exception of senior management, were formerly incarcerated.

Rehan’s colleagues eventually spoke to Brent Bates, the son of the owners of the garbage trucking company, about the smart young man on staff. Bates soon took Rehan under his wing and brought him to Bowie State University to meet a professor.

This professor was so impressed by his conversation with Rehan that he appealed the admissions board on his behalf. Rehan began undergrad later that year and earned a 4.0 GPA.

“I became the president of organizations. I was winning so many scholastic accolades — it was crazy.” By the end of his second year, Rehan decided he wanted to go to law school.

Read the rest of this inspiring story here!

 

(Photo courtesy of Rehan Staton)

 

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