Hasnain says:

This was a moving read on how just getting folks into college with scholarships isn't enough - that often is just the beginning of another, difficult struggle. The author walks through their own story from being a first-generation college student, to a first generation graduate student, to becoming a professor at Harvard.

"By my junior year, I had secured four jobs in addition to monitoring and cleaning the gym. My financial-aid officer didn’t understand why I worked so many jobs or why I picked up even more hours at times. That fall, right after Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, I was called in to the financial-aid office. They wanted to discuss my work schedule and to tell me that they would be reaching out to my bosses to let them know I needed to cut back hours. I was working too much; that’s what the work-study rules said.

I pleaded with them not to. I needed the money. More truthfully, my family and I did"

Posted on 2019-10-07T00:22:37+0000