Where you start in life can often determine where you end up. But not always.

Author Tom Seeman experienced an unusual journey to a distant destination and shares insights in his book; Animals I Want to See, a Memoir of Growing Up In the Projects and Defying the Odds. Seeman's identity, ambition, religion, and friendship—often across racial and social lines— are the touchstones of his journey from a child janitor with big dreams to a teenage petty criminal to a student at Yale and Harvard.

Seeman's shares some of those moments, aspirations and inspirations with us on the JX.