🎧 Janitor Filipaj · 全程听力训练

For years, Gac Filipaj mopped floors, cleaned toilets and took out trash at Columbia University. A refugee from war-torn Yugoslavia, he made a living working for the Ivy League school since 1993. But Sunday, May 13, 2012, was payback time. The 52-year-old janitor put on a cap and gown to graduate with a bachelor's degree in classics.

As a Columbia employee, he didn't have to pay for the classes. Filipaj said he loved Seneca's letters, which were written in the spirit he was educated in — not to look for fame and fortune, but to have a simple, honest, honorable life.

For Filipaj, the degree comes after years studying late into the night in his Bronx apartment, where he'd open his books after a 2:30 to 11 p.m. shift as a heavy cleaner. Before exam time or to finish a paper, he'd pull all-nighters, then go to class in the morning and then to work. As his mother tongue is Albanian, it took him almost seven years to learn to master the English language.

On Sunday morning on Columbia's Manhattan campus, Filipaj flashed a huge smile and gave a thumbs-up as he walked off the podium after shaking hands with Columbia President Lee Bollinger.

"This is a man with great pride, whether he's doing custodial work or academics," said Peter Awn, dean of Columbia's School of General Studies. "He is very humble and grateful, but he's an individual who makes his own future."

It's been a long road for Filipaj who fled to the United States in 1992, leaving behind his parents and siblings on a family farm in Montenegro, then a Yugoslav republic. He had attended the Law College in Belgrade as a part-time student, but the civil war broke out and he had to leave during the last year of his studies.

At first in New York, his uncle in the Bronx offered him shelter in exchange for work in his grocery store. Filipaj asked people which were the best schools in New York. Columbia topped his list. "I went there to see if I could get a job," he said.

Part of his twenty-two-dollar-an-hour janitor's pay still goes back to his brother, wife and two kids in Montenegro. He doesn't have a computer or a cellphone. He bought a computer for his family and can only be reached via e-mail.

During the interview with the Associated Press, Filipaj didn't show the slightest regret or bitterness. Instead, he cheerfully described encounters with surprised students who wondered why their classmate was cleaning up after them.

His ambition is to get a master's degree, maybe even a Ph.D., in Roman and Greek classics. He hopes to become a teacher someday and translate his favorite classics into Albanian.

He's not interested in furthering his studies to make more money. "The richness is in me, in my heart and in my head, not in my pockets," he said. For now, he's trying to get a better job, maybe as supervisor.

Soon after, the spirited, 5-foot-4 janitor picked up a broom and dustpan and went back to work.