The bare minimum would be expected for most high school seniors who’ve been abandoned by their parents, slept on friends’ couches and had to work part-time jobs to survive.
But Dawn Loggins, a brainy 18-year-old from North Carolina, dreamed of more: Now, she’s headed for Harvard University in spite of growing up homeless.
Loggins found out two months ago she was accepted to the Ivy League institution and recently visited the campus, she told the Charlotte Observer.
“I wondered how I’d be accepted, being homeless and from a rural area in North Carolina,” she said. “But everyone — the students and faculty — was great. ”
Loggins’ inspirational story caught the attention of CNN, which plans to be at her Burns High School graduation Thursday, the newspaper reported.
Child homelessness is a growing problem, with about 1.6 million U.S. kids without a proper roof over their heads, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness.
Stats are sketchier on how many homeless high school seniors actually move on to college — and earn a prestigious Ivy education to boot.
“There were a lot of things outside Dawn’s control,” Robyn Putnam, a counselor at Burns High in Lawndale, N.C., told The Observer. “But Dawn learned that succeeding in school was something she could control.”
Abandoned by her parents, Loggins and her brother were living with their grandmother. That’s when the teasing started, she told WBTV in Charlotte.
Her grandmother “never really explained to me ... that it was important to shower — it was important to take care of yourself, so I would go months at a time without showering,” Loggins said. “I would wear the same dress to school for months at a time.”
Her mother and a stepfather came back into her life when she turned 13, but they brought little stability, according to reports.
“We were evicted several times,” Loggins told WBTV. “I went to three different middle schools, three different high schools.”
Her parents were unable to pay the utility bills, and there were times the teen did her homework by candlelight, she said.
In March 2010, Loggins’ mother enrolled her at Burns High as a sophomore. By her junior year, her parents skipped town again, but Loggins was taken in by a friend’s mother, according to The Observer.
She took a job as a janitor at her school, arriving for her two-hour shift at 6 a.m. Through it all, she also kept good grades, earning straight A’s and ranking 10th in her class.
At Harvard, she’ll rely on grants and take an on-campus job to pay for her tuition and board, according to reports.
Loggins said she holds no ill-will toward her parents or grandmother, and that she learned a valuable lesson: that having a good work ethic can help overcome adversity.
“There are no excuses,” Loggins told WBTV. “It all depends on you, and no one else.
