Derrius Quarles may not have been the one voted "Most Likely to Succeed" or even "Likely to Go to College". Quarles was known as a disruptive student who was often late to class. Then a teacher made a difference in his life and he turned it all around. More to the point, he turned it around to the tune of $1.1 million in scholarships.
Quarles grew up in foster care on Chicago's south side. His father was murdered when Quarles was only 4 and he was removed from his mother at the age of 5. He writes on his website that "the challenges of the inner-city almost lead him down a path of crime and fast money."
The first thing his teachers remember about him is the frequent use of profanity. Not everyone saw much more than that, and most people told him he would amount to nothing. One teacher, however, Ms. Nivedita Nutakki, took him aside and told him that he had potential and could do so much better. She taught him science for 3 years and he got better every year.…show more content… He said that he had done so much but he wanted to keep going and college was the next step. Nobody in his family had gone to college before so he didn't know much about it. He started looking at the expenses and realized that the cost might be one reason nobody had gone. He knew that if he was going to have a chance, he was going to have to find a way to pay for
