When Jennifer Lopez left high school, she enrolled in New York’s Baruch College to study business. She worked as a secretary at a Castle Hill law firm in the Bronx to subsidize her studies. However, dancing was still Lopez’s first love; she was desperate to build an entertainment career and took jazz dance classes at night. Ultimately, Lopez dropped out of college after completing one semester to pursue her dream of becoming a full-time dancer, much to the displeasure of her mom, Guadalupe Rodríguez.
In his biography “Jennifer Lopez,” James Robert Parish explains that her parents “wanted her to become a lawyer. They thought it was time to put aside her passion for dancing (and her classes in Manhattan) and turn to something more practical that would ensure her financial future.” Ironically, according to Forbes, Lopez was worth a cool $150 million in 2020.
Meanwhile, things became so bad between Lopez and Rodríguez that the couple stopped talking to each other. However, everybody’s favorite ’70s crooner ultimately reunited the warring mother and daughter. Lopez’s mom loves Barry Manilow, and he was performing for Mother’s Day. “So I was like, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I haven’t spoken to my mother for, like, eight months…’ I went and bought tickets,” Lopez told Jay Leno in May 2011 (via Seattle PI), admitting, “And that’s when we started talking again.”
