Young, in School and Employed
Credit: Emily Berl for The New York Times
Raquel Beckford, 18, in honors English class at Peace and Diversity Academy in the Bronx. She works part time at a law firm.
Describing the grind of holding a demanding job while studying to graduate from high school, she said: “You know that feeling when you get home and lay in bed and your whole body just hurts? I feel like that all the time.”
Raquel works three days a week after school at the law firm Adam Leitman Bailey, P.C., in Manhattan, more than an hour’s ride by train from her home in the Bronx. She is salutatorian of her class at Peace and Diversity Academy and attends college classes two days a week.
Raquel lives with her mother, who is unemployed, and works to pay her own expenses, as well as to gain job experience.
