Bill Pennington's Defying The Odds

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Having to grow up in a rough neighbor, going to college and being kicked out, growing up with no parents and going to jail, and being raised during segregation and move to not be mistreated and end up in worst are life stories that can be a testimony that people may look at as inspirational and encouraging.
Author Bill Pennington formulates about Victor Cruz who attends the University of Massachusetts in the article “Defying the Odds.” Cruz was a student who had all the support and help he could get while in college, but he just did not realize it. With him not taking the initiative to use the help he was offered, his football scholarship was revoked and he was kicked out of college. Cruz had this situation happen to him because of his grades. …show more content…

Cruz finally took the initiative and received the help he was being offered. In the end, he got the opportunity to attend the University of Massachusetts, play football again, and have better looking grades than before.
Abandoned by his parents at age seven, living with his grandparents for a while, and then in detention homes where he ran away, Jimmy Santiago Baca found himself in prison one day at the age of twenty one. The reason he was in prison was because he was a successful drug dealer (Baker 858). Baca never knew how to read or write because he dropped out of school. When he received a letter from a man in a church program he had a little difficulty reading it.
After reading the letter, Baca said, “I believe something in my brain or something in my nervous system was impacted by poetry, by the way the lines and the words were arranged” (Baker 860). At first, being able to not read or write Baca did not know what the letter said. But with the help of a prison library, he finally could read and write. Allowing himself to be able feel those emotions when reading the letter. He knew it was time to

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