A dime holed up inside a pocket of his pants was the only thing my grandfather carried with him the day he left Cuba.
In a way, the rest of his life — and his family’s lives — depended on that coin. As he boarded a plane headed to Miami gripping my grandmother’s hand, he planned to use the money to call a friend who would pick him up from the airport.
He fled a dictatorship. He escaped police officers who wanted to arrest him for his rebellious actions. He said goodbye to 35 years lived on the island.
When he got to the U.S., he worked as a taxi driver for Diamond Cab Company. He worked hard. Eventually, he was offered a job in Honduras. He uprooted his family, moved to a small country in Central America and worked harder.
He worked as a car salesman and a construction manager. My grandmother worked, too. She was a teacher at an American school. But when the U.S. Southern Association of Schools and Colleges demanded all staff members to bring their degrees in, and she couldn’t exactly fly out to Cuba to get hers, she was laid off.
So my grandparents did what they always did. They continued to work hard. They founded a private bilingual school, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last May.
When I was a little girl, my dad woke up every morning and drove to that same school at about 5 a.m. to make sure the buses left in time to pick up the students. Every evening, I hugged him hello when he got home. I remember how he smelled — a combination of sweat and worn out cologne from the long work day. My mom stayed at home and worked just as hard (or maybe even harder) raising four closely aged children. I remember how she smelled — always like some sort of food from cooking.
Listening with open eyes, raised brows and hung jaws, my three brothers and I heard my dad recount our grandparents’ story countless times when we were kids. Every single time, my dad would finish it off the same way.
“Work hard,” he would say. “If you work hard, you can do anything you want.”
Working hard is what allowed me to get a scholarship and enroll at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers in 2014. It’s what helped me grow at Eagle News, the school’s weekly publication.
Working hard is what brought me to Gainesville and made me a Gator. It’s what empowered me to get through long nights and nerve-wracking tasks at The Alligator.
The most important lesson I’ve learned in my 21 years is hard work can get you anywhere. A strong work ethic is the best superpower you can have. It doesn’t matter if you have no talent or no resources — or neither. If you work hard for your dreams, I promise you’ll make them a reality.
I dreamed of someday moving to the U.S. to study among some of the most brilliant minds and on some of the richest spaces on Earth — and I did it by working hard. Looking back, I can see my grandparents’ dream was to protect their family. My parents’ dream was to see their four children happy. Hard work gave them that.
Working hard — until your back hurts and your eyes twitch and you feel like you have never been more exhausted in your life just to think the same thought again each day after — matters. Not only because it enables you to achieve your goals, but also because working hard builds character.
It gives you a purpose in life.
Jimena Tavel is a UF journalism senior. She is the engagement managing editor of The Alligator.
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