The Road from Mississippi to Harvard

In this moving New York Times article, Justin Porter reflects on his journey from a small Mississippi high school to Harvard. As he contemplated his early-acceptance letter, he says he felt “trapped between the two worlds in front of me. One held seemingly unlimited opportunity – full scholarship, career advancement, travel possibilities. But what would I sacrifice in exchange? My mother and I have never been on firm financial ground, and that was not going to magically change… The guilt was invasive; beneath my smile, shame dominated my thoughts. I spent the last few weeks of my senior year worried sick – that if I left she would not have enough to eat, a safe place to live, loving company to listen to her stories.” Porter almost deferred Harvard’s acceptance, but his mother would hear nothing of it and he enrolled.

Thinking back on his freshman year, he was disappointed with his middling grades and awestruck by the learning experiences – including chatting with Lawrence Summers over pizza and hearing a lecture by Atul Gawande. But he kept thinking about the failure of most top colleges to attract more low-income students like him. “I do not believe that increasing financial aid packages and creating glossy brochures alone will reverse this trend,” he says. “The true forces that are keeping us away from elite colleges are cultural: the fear of entering an alien environment, the guilt of leaving loved ones alone to deal with increasing economic pressure, the impulse to work to support oneself and one’s family… Maybe I should have stayed in Mississippi where I belonged.”

But in the end, he’s glad he persisted: “Harvard has forced me to grow and take a candid look at the world, and at myself. Suffice it to say, I would not trade the experience for anything.”

“Reflections on the Road to Harvard” by Justin Porter in The New York Times, Aug. 4, 2013, http://nyti.ms/165zO8E 

From the Marshall Memo #498