You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Graduating from janitor to graduating Ivy league top of your class.
This Yugoslavian is a modern day Good Will Hunting.
This man is inspirational and shows what dedication to spirit and purpose can bring a man.
His name is Gac Filipaj. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it, don’t know and don’t care, but his story is gold.
He is 52 years old.
He has peppered hair and a little wobble in his walk. His accent is discernible, but his English clear and direct.
In 1992, Filipaj fled war torn Yugoslavia and made his way to the United States.
He spoke no English. He had no money. He had no job.
He went to Columbia University and got a job as a janitor.
Can you imagine moving to Yugoslavia and not knowing the language. You take a job at night twisting tops on toothpaste at some factory deep in the heart of a human rights violation.
At night you toil away for pennies and by day you learn a language filled with guttural phloem swallowing. Eventually, you enter Yugoslavia’s premiere university, which is akin to a McDonald’s.
Does it sound arduous? Does it sound like hell on Earth? Is it something you might wish on a friend you don’t like that much?
Well it is a real life success story.
Filipaj studied English and when he felt he could handle the load, after 7 years of cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors of erudite, aristocratic rich kids, he entered the university. Not just any university, not the McDonalds-Toys R Us-lamb chop- U. We’re talking Ivy League giant: Columbia University.
For 12 years he pushed a mop at night cleaning up after the very spoiled children he attended class with the next day.
It was a physically demanding grind. A non stop array of work and labor and studying and hanging on wondering how can I keep this up?
Now 52 years old, Filipaj is being interviewed on the news. He is a proud man, a success story, a scholar graduating with honors, in a very difficult major, The Classics.
He was immensely proud as a janitor, Professor Peter Awn said on ABC news. “He was equally as proud as a student.”
Filipaj plans to keep his job as a janitor after he graduates while he contemplates his next move and he attempts to obtain his PHD.
When asked what it feels like to finally graduate after 19 years, the proud Yugoslav said; “I don’t know what it will feel like. It seems like I woke from a nice dream.”
A nice dream for him, an inspiration for others the reporter says.
That’s a good line to a great story.
And that’s what’s crazy. He had a dream when most of us would have had nightmares.
He created a life out of thin air like some kind of educational savant. he is a magician, sewing a mink coat out of rat hair.
This guy had every reason to quit. All he did was finish at the top of his class.
He cleaned the crap out of toilets and toiled on. He didn’t let a language barrier, or the rigors of a very difficult field of study stop him from achieving his dream.
He is 52 years old.
I’m not so sure that the coddled snot blowers of today’s youth would fair as well.
Kids today are soft and quick to give up. It’s not their fault, its ours. We are the parents who decided it was OK for nobody to keep score at a kid’s soccer game. We are the parents who say it is OK to prohibit school bake sales because our kids are corpulent mounds of goo. We are the reason, our kids grow up on the couch, holding a game controller in one hand, a TV remote in the other, and tootsie roll shoved in their mouth.
It’s a joke. We’re soft. And only getting softer.
Maybe the news should do more than tell Filipaj’s story in a 90 second feel good end to the newscast. Maybe this inspirational Yugoslav should teach us how to re-dedicate ourselves to purpose. Perhaps he can teach us to reconnect with that “i think I can” mentality that made this country great.
And that’s crazy.™