Dawn Loggins

The New York Daily News has the story of a young girl, abandoned by her parents, indigent, who slept on friends’ couches and worked part-time jobs to survive.

She was never trained in personal hygiene or social conventions by anyone, wore the same dress for months at a time, and was forced to transfer to six different schools. She worked a job as a janitor in her high school but nonetheless got straight A’s.

“There are no excuses,” she told the interviewer from a local radio station. “It all depends on you, and no one else.”

It doesn’t take a village. It takes personal determination and drive.