A rough road to Harvard
For most of her 18 years, Khadijah Williams floated among California motels and shelters with her indigent mother. She sometimes lived out of garbage bags and was taunted by drug dealers, “You live on skid row!’’ But in third grade, Khadijah placed in the 99th percentile on a state exam, and though she attended 12 schools in as many years, she finished high school with a near-A average. This spring she was accepted to more than 20 colleges and will attend Harvard. “I never wanted people to say, ‘You got the easy way out because you were homeless,’” Williams said. “I never saw it as an excuse.”
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