A rough road to Harvard, and more

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.”

Lessons from Discovery Channel save 9-year-old

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Separated from his family on a weekend hike in the Ashley National Forest of northern Utah, 9-year-old Grayson Wynne began to panic. But then he remembered the lessons he had learned from watching Man vs. Wild, a Discovery Channel program that teaches survival techniques. Tearing up his yellow rain slicker, he tied the bits to trees as markers. On Saturday night he slept in a small shelter he built. And on Sunday he followed a creek in search of help. Finally, after 18 hours, rescuers on horseback spotted him. “It was such a good feeling that I was going to be all right,” he said.