DURING THE QUESTION AND ANSWER session, a freshman thanks guest speaker Cedric Jennings for his frank disclosure of his perilous odyssey from inner city to Ivy League. He says he comes from a similar background. He doesn't have to provide details. His voice cracks as he stifles a choke.

Another fall semester has begun. In lecture halls and classrooms across campus, students are experimenting and risking. For first-year students, the catalyst comes from a shared summer reading experience. Cedric Jenning's odyssey was documented in intimately observed detail by Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Hope in the Unseen, Suskind chronicles Jennings' determination to escape the fate of his drug-dealing, jailed father. Tormented by jealous classmates, acutely aware of the academic shortcomings of his war zone of a high school, Jennings locks onto an exit strategy with religious fervor.

"Why do you want to go so far away from here, somewhere you ain't even seen?" his only friend asks. "What kind of fool spends his life trying to go somewhere he has no idea about? You may not even like it. Then what? Your life be ruined."

His faith sustained by a mother who believes in him, Jennings says, "I want to make it to MIT or wherever. I know it's crazy, but that's where I belong."

BECAUSE OF SUSKIND'S BOOK, the freshmen attending Jennings' talk feel they know him well enough to address him by his first name. He is like an older brother who can commiserate and advise. He has experienced what they are experiencing now - the hopefulness, the uncertainty and the fear, and he made it. He not only graduated from Brown University, he earned a master's degree from Harvard, and now he's serving his community as a clinical social worker.

Jennings reassures them, "It's a good thing to be tested and to reach outside your comfort zone." more