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Meet another student in our Senior Snapshots series, which offers a look at some of the New York teenagers getting their diplomas this month.

For students in foster care, staying in school can be difficult when moving around different homes is part of their reality. Less than a third of students in foster care graduated on time in 2010, and about a quarter dropped out of high school.

Eighteen-year-old Markus Dixon is defying those odds and is graduating from the High School of Telecommunication Arts in Brooklyn. Dixon said he learned a valuable lesson from living with one foster family that did not emphasize education.

"Nobody else is going to do this for me or wake me up in the morning to go to school," he said. "It has to be me."

Dixon, whose biological parents both died, has shuffled around many foster homes in Brooklyn since he was 13. When he got to high school, he learned how to cope with the stress by running, which he said is "therapeutic."

"You just take everything that happens in your house and whatever and you just put it all into track," he said. "It's really helped me the person I am today."

Markus became a track and cross country star, winning hundreds of awards.

"Running fuels my motivation for school because without running I don't think I would have made it through school."

Markus credits his foster family for their support and an English teacher named Melissa Corto who tutored him after class. This fall, he's heading to the State University of New York in Plattsburgh.