A Maryland student who woke up at 4:00AM to begin his job as a garbage collector in an effort to support his family has spoken out about the moment he learned he had received a place at Harvard Law School.
Twenty-four-year-old Rehan Staton from Bowie, Maryland, will begin his time at the prestigious law school in the fall after battling a difficult start in life that involved family and financial struggles and pre-dawn wake-ups to work a sanitation job.
This is the incredible moment Staton found out he'd been accepted to Harvard:"It was probably the most surreal moment of my life," Staton told TODAY, "after going through everything that we did as a family, I just felt that we got into Harvard, and like, I just can't even explain it. It was 'we.'''
Staton had experienced a stable home life growing up in Maryland, until his mother left his father and moved out of the country when he was 8 years old. His father worked multiple jobs to support the family, but it was a struggle.
"There were times where we just didn't have electricity," Staton revealed, "we didn't have food in the fridge."
The difficult home life affected his grades, which suffered through middle school and fluctuated throughout high school as a tutor from a local community center helped him out. Then, a rotator cuff injury in his junior year derailed Staton's hopes of becoming a boxer.
"At that time, I was really involved in sports, and I thought sports would be a way out of poverty,'' he said. "Support from my father and support from my brother, if it wasn't for those two, it would've been impossible."
That's when he took up a job at Bates Trucking & Trash Removal. Here, his academic prowess was admired, and his colleagues - some of them ex-convicts - encouraged him to go to school.
In an interview with CNN, Staton said: "It was the first time in my life people were lifting me up for the sake of lifting me up and not because I was good at sports.
"Throughout my entire life all the people in my life who I was supposed to look up to were the ones who always downplayed me and made me feel bad about myself.
"I had to go to the 'bottom' of the social hierarchy - that's to say formerly incarcerated sanitation workers - in order to be uplifted."
Reggie Staton, who was attending Bowie State University already, saw the promise his brother was showing and selflessly dropped out of school so Rehan could attend and he could help their father at home.
After receiving a 4.0 grade-point average, Rehan Staton transferred to the University of Maryland.
Staton's drive to improve his life was inspired by his father's sacrifices for their family.
"Watching my father work anywhere between one and three jobs, giving up his entire social life just to give my brother and I the basic needs — I was hungry, if that makes sense,'' he explained. "I was really hungry, but also at the same time, I just really wanted to succeed."
When Staton's father suffered a stroke in 2017, he returned to Bates Trucking and Trash alongside his brother to save their home. He would start 4am in order to get a shift in before class.
He then went on to work in political consulting with the Robert Bobb Group as he studied for the LSAT, and achieved places at numerous law schools including Harvard, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, and Pepperdine.
"If you put in the effort and the work and you stay committed, things will fall into place," Staton said.
