Luckily, he says, his grandmothers had hammered self-respect into him. He was proud of the solitary women who had raised him, and proud of how hard his father and mother had worked to send money to Colombia to put food on the family table. Still, each time he uttered his awkward sentences, he was sure other students wondered what he was doing at Princeton.
In the classroom he was very quiet, he says. But as the year progressed, he showed a firm grasp of the course material on written tests. He would read a required chapter so many times he would memorize much of it. He was always ahead of the reading list by two weeks. He kept two notebooks for every course, one recording what the professor had said in class and the other containing more organized summaries supplemented with explanations and diagrams. To study, he found private niches where there were no distractions. He was particularly attached to the classrooms in Palmer Hall, where nearly half a century before Einstein had given some of his lectures.
It was a form letter from the adviser to foreign-born students, Janina M. Issawi. Those who were not citizens or permanent residents were asked to set up appointments and bring their documents to be photocopied. According to a Princeton spokeswoman, Emily Aronson, the university had to verify that these students were eligible for federal loans or work-study jobs. Harold had received a Pell grant and federal loans, both restricted to citizens or permanent residents. He was neither.
A copy of his green card had been submitted with his application; now Princeton was asking for the original. But the original was a crude forgery.
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