Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story

       

        Liz Murray was born with suffering. Her mother was addicted to drugs and alcohol, legally blind, and suffering from schizophrenia. Her mother would ask for money from Liz and her old sister, Lisa, to buy drugs, and she did not care about how her daughters were going to live without money. Her father was also an alcoholic and drug addict. He did not care anything about this family, even though when Liz was sent to the group home, where a lot of girls had mental problems. Liz was living in such a family: nobody was being responsible for taking care of her, their house was always messy and dirty, and she had not only to learn how to keep herself alive but also take care of her mother, who got AIDS. 

       School made Liz sad. Her classmates stayed away from her because she was smelly, and that was because her dad thought taking a bath was too much. Even though Liz only went to school three times a month, she still could get a 100 on the test. She loved reading. The lady who lived upstairs gave her The Encyclopedia, and that taught her a lot. Because she did not go to school every day, Child Welfare sent her to the group home and expected somebody could be responsible for taking care of her. However, she did not have a good life there either. She saw how those girls fought and bullied each other, and she was treated the same way. 

      Later Liz lived with her mother in her grandfather's apartment. She was told that all her belongings in her dad's apartment were thrown away because her dad was sent to a shelter. She lost all her books, and she thought that school was the only way for her to learn. She went back to school and made a good friend, Chris. Their friendship brought some light to Liz's life, but her living situation was still tough. Her grandfather did not like her, so she left his place when she was 15 and became homeless. 

      The death of Liz's mother was a turning point for her. She realized that she had to push herself to make life good, and she needed a chance to climb out of the place that she had been born in. She went back to school and excelled in her high school work. She got a chance to visit Harvard University during her high school, and she was amazed by the people who studied there. She longed to be one of them and decided to work as hard as possible to see what would happen. She accelerated a four-year program to a two-year program, and she used her personal experiences to apply for New York Times scholarship. With her hard striving to achieve her academic goal and the desire to change her life, she won the scholarship and entered Harvard University.