A man who started at New York University as a janitor recently graduated with a nursing degree.
Frank Baez, 29, moved to the United States 14 years ago with his mother. They came from the Dominican Republic.
Baez got a job as a janitor at the university’s Langone Tisch Hospital to help bring money in for his family, he told Good Morning America.
He soon became interested in what was going on at the hospital and his next job was a patient transporter, helping patients move to and from rooms for procedures.
He later quit to obtain a bachelor’s degree at Hunter College. Nurses he had worked with told him he should apply to the university’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing. He got accepted and completed the program in just over a year.
Favorite story of the day #neverstopdreaming #dontstopbelieving – Man graduates with nursing degree from same university where he started as a janitor (@abc, Katie Kindelan) https://t.co/5LEkG3ER6y
— Lauren Effron (@LEffronG) May 22, 2019
“While working [at NYU] with the nurses, I realized I wanted to be one of them,” Baez told Good Morning America. “I learned how much they advocate for their patients and the passion they have for their job.”
He said he wants to get a job as a critical care nurse in the university’s intensive care unit and talked about how he persevered through the tough program.
“I was never an A student. I just studied a lot and worked a lot,” he said.
“Of course there were times I doubted myself, but then I felt that I wanted to do something more for myself, that I deserved better, that I wanted to continue to move forward and grow and go on with my life. What I did was, I never gave up.”
Homeless Teen Earns Scholarships, Graduates
A teenager was able to graduate with top honors and earn more than $3 million in college scholarships—while being homeless.
Tupac Mosley, 17, from Raleigh Egypt High School in Memphis, Tennessee, received more than 50 scholarships before he graduated in May, WHBQ reported.
He said he was accepted into more than 40 colleges, and he’s chosen Tennessee State University, where he hopes to major in electrical engineering, according to WHBQ.
Mosley told the news outlet that he had aimed to garner about $1 million in scholarships.
The news station reported that Mosley had become homeless during his senior year.
“After my father passed, we fell behind on bills and we ended up getting evicted from our home February 21 of this year,” he said.
The family stayed at “For the Kingdom,” a camping site and nonprofit that helps children who are undergoing hard times.
“We were blessed to have For the Kingdom,” he said, adding that college may have not been an option if it weren’t for their support.
“When I heard that I got $3 million, I was more than elated and excited and astonished that it was that much,” he told WHBQ.
He managed to maintain a GPA of 4.3 his last year of high school. He said the hardest challenge was time management.
In his speech at graduation on May 19, he expressed gratitude to his teachers for believing in him. Mosley also shared touching words on the struggles he and others like him have faced.
“Many of us on stage have lost one [a family member] already, including myself. I lost my father my sophomore year,” he said. “But obviously it did not act as a complete deterrent to any of us, because we are still here today, on stage, graduating.”
In his speech, Mosley encouraged his classmates to keep working hard.
“We are the kings and queens of Memphis. We have not had our throne taken away from us. No matter what we go through, we are still going to come out on top.”
“In the future, I would love to see all of my classmates be successful because I know they will,” he said. “We will never give up.”
Epoch Times reporter Mimi Nguyen-ly contributed to this report.
