I read a story the other night from NBC News about a 17 year old Long Island high school senior that had applied to 13 colleges, including all 8 Ivy League schools and was accepted to ALL of them! But it wasn’t that he had been accepted to all 8 Ivy League schools that really drew me into the story.

His family immigrated to America 10 years ago and Harold credits his parents for his hard work ethic. You see, this 17 year old boy, is a straight-A student while taking advanced placement classes, participates in countless extracurricular activities, was inspired by his grandmother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s to find a cure so therefore he is also a science research student and oh, did I mention that he scored a 2270 out of 2400 on his SATs? If you are wondering just how high that score is exactly…well, that places him in the 99th percentile nationally and statistically indicates that he may only miss out on ONE school of his choice…however, it would appear he even beat that stat with his record acceptance letters.

But it still wasn’t even all of this that caught my attention. It goes even deeper yet. It was his response to the entire situation. His humbleness. His gratitude about all of it. The young man that wants to go on to study biochemistry, become a neurosurgeon, work at Mt. Sinai in New York City, and was actually concerned whether he would even get accepted into one of his ‘backup’ schools, said:

“Like in America, the opportunities are truly limitless…so I think that’s what surprised me the most, how amazing the opportunities really are.”

What an inspirational boy. Not even with all of his hard work, did he ‘expect’ any entitlements. His family SOUGHT out opportunity in America, CREATED opportunities for themselves by hard WORK, DEDICATION, and PERSEVERANCE and yet when it was returned to him, he remained humble and overfilled with GRATITUDE.

My wish for many is to remember Harold Ekeh and this: Seek, Create, Persevere, and remain Grateful.

There are no entitlements in life but life itself. -Jacque Georgia