After his graduation, Hughes attempted to peacefully reunite with his father, who was now a wealthy lawyer in Mexico, in order to ask for money so he could pursue a quality post-high school education. After his unsuccessful attempt, Hughes returned to the United States, deciding that his faith will lie only in his hands. On his way back, Hughes wrote one of his most famous poems "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," readily admitting that he wrote the best when he was sad and depressed" (Early 26). In 1921, Hughes spent a year at Columbia University, however, just to find out that he did not make the right choice, for colleges were still discriminating regularly. Looking for jobs, he landed a position as a seaman on the SS Malone that brought him closer to his own race emotionally, by traveling to Africa and Europe. "Although he was almost constantly at sea, his poems got published regularly in African-American magazines such as the Crisis." (Rampersad 118). By this time, Hughes already established himself as the young star of the New Negro Renaissance. As time passed, a young, unskilled, position-seeking Hughes became a bus boy at the prominent Wardman Park Hotel in Washington D.C.. After Vachel Lindsay recited three of his poems, which Hughes intentionally left by Vachel's plate, he received slight attention from different publishers. When Hughes won his first poetry award in 1925 through a contest by a journal called Negro Life, his award winning poem got him further recognition, that would eventually lead to his first book, The Weary Blues. Soon enough, "through his poetry, from a kind and generous woman who had shown interest in his work, came a scholarship" (Smith 359). Four years later, in 1929, Hughes graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania with a B.A.. Never even thinking about his young age, other authors selected Hughes to become the leader of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary circle of black writers focu...