Guards at his side, jailed teen was able to attend college on campus. ‘I didn’t count the days. I made the days count.’

It was time for midterm grades, and Nigel Lee expected the worst.

The 18-year-old heard the stories about how tough college can be and how students stayed up cramming for exams. And the nursing program he was interested in was particularly competitive and demanding.

Jailed since he was 16, Lee believed he had fallen behind the rest of the class at Malcolm X College on the West Side of Chicago. But with each class, his confidence ballooned: C, A, A and A.

“Man, do you know how happy I was?” said Lee, now 20. “I was so happy. I was known as the guy in college who was locked up. I thought I was going to do so bad, and I did so great.”