rainn17
Jan 8, 2011
Undergraduate / USC Essay - How my disability has made me stronger [4]
Hi! Please read this, and be totally honest, and if need be, brutal!
Thomas Edison failed many times before successfully inventing the modern electric light bulb. He said, "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." Reflect on a challenge you overcame through persistence.
When people first meet me they're not quite sure what to think of me because I'm in a wheelchair. See, I was born with a rare condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), or brittle bone disease, meaning my bones break easily. I've had reactions across the scale, from people who act entirely normal around me to those who ask my parents or friends what's wrong with me, as if I couldn't answer for myself. And a lot of people would think that living my entire life confined to a wheelchair makes me bitter. Actually it doesn't. If anything, I think being disabled has made me a stronger person. Now I'm not saying I wouldn't love to be completely normal and wheelchair free - I'm no saint after all. I get frustrated and angry, and pray that someday researchers will be successful in finding a cure for my disability. But I'm not sure that if given the chance, I would redo the last seventeen years of my life as a physically normal person. Living with OI has taught me determination, perseverance, the value of hard work, and compassion. These lessons leak into every facet of my life, even ones unaffected by my disability. And, in the end, I think that they make me a better person.
One of the biggest challenges with my disability occurs when I have a fracture during the school year. For example, during my sophomore year of high school, I had an unusually painful and restrictive fracture that caused me to miss four weeks of school. Normally if I'm out for such an extended period, I am assigned a home hospital teacher so I don't have as much makeup work when I return. However for a variety of reasons, the school couldn't assign an instructor until I was already back in school. Let me tell you, when you're looking at making up a month's worth of homework in addition to learning what your classes are currently doing, it can make you want to give up. It would have saved me a lot of grief and sleepless nights to drop my Algebra/Trig and Chemistry courses, put them off until the next year, and take some easy electives in the meantime. But I didn't. I decided that I'd already put half a year's work into my classes, and I didn't want to throw that away. So by putting in a lot of extra time, and using my summer to finish the classes, I somehow made it through the year and started my junior year on track. I know several people, teachers included, who didn't understand why I insisted on finishing my classes when postponing them to a later time would have been easier. But such a large part of my life is altered because I break bones, that if I always put things off until later and never persevered through the tough times, things would never get done. I never know when I am going to break something - my bones sometimes break without a fall or any noticeable cause. So I need to get things done when I can, even if it's hard, because otherwise I might never get caught up. As my dad would say: You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.
I think that my disability has given me a "can do" attitude. It has given me the maturity and confidence to be willing to try things because if I hadn't had to overcome things my whole life, I never would have done those things.
I guess the sum of all the above is that I have gained the following perspective from my disability: everyone has limitations, but the extent to which we let them define us is our own choice. I choose to look at what I can do, not what I can't do.
Hi! Please read this, and be totally honest, and if need be, brutal!
Thomas Edison failed many times before successfully inventing the modern electric light bulb. He said, "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." Reflect on a challenge you overcame through persistence.
When people first meet me they're not quite sure what to think of me because I'm in a wheelchair. See, I was born with a rare condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), or brittle bone disease, meaning my bones break easily. I've had reactions across the scale, from people who act entirely normal around me to those who ask my parents or friends what's wrong with me, as if I couldn't answer for myself. And a lot of people would think that living my entire life confined to a wheelchair makes me bitter. Actually it doesn't. If anything, I think being disabled has made me a stronger person. Now I'm not saying I wouldn't love to be completely normal and wheelchair free - I'm no saint after all. I get frustrated and angry, and pray that someday researchers will be successful in finding a cure for my disability. But I'm not sure that if given the chance, I would redo the last seventeen years of my life as a physically normal person. Living with OI has taught me determination, perseverance, the value of hard work, and compassion. These lessons leak into every facet of my life, even ones unaffected by my disability. And, in the end, I think that they make me a better person.
One of the biggest challenges with my disability occurs when I have a fracture during the school year. For example, during my sophomore year of high school, I had an unusually painful and restrictive fracture that caused me to miss four weeks of school. Normally if I'm out for such an extended period, I am assigned a home hospital teacher so I don't have as much makeup work when I return. However for a variety of reasons, the school couldn't assign an instructor until I was already back in school. Let me tell you, when you're looking at making up a month's worth of homework in addition to learning what your classes are currently doing, it can make you want to give up. It would have saved me a lot of grief and sleepless nights to drop my Algebra/Trig and Chemistry courses, put them off until the next year, and take some easy electives in the meantime. But I didn't. I decided that I'd already put half a year's work into my classes, and I didn't want to throw that away. So by putting in a lot of extra time, and using my summer to finish the classes, I somehow made it through the year and started my junior year on track. I know several people, teachers included, who didn't understand why I insisted on finishing my classes when postponing them to a later time would have been easier. But such a large part of my life is altered because I break bones, that if I always put things off until later and never persevered through the tough times, things would never get done. I never know when I am going to break something - my bones sometimes break without a fall or any noticeable cause. So I need to get things done when I can, even if it's hard, because otherwise I might never get caught up. As my dad would say: You don't have to like it, you just have to do it.
I think that my disability has given me a "can do" attitude. It has given me the maturity and confidence to be willing to try things because if I hadn't had to overcome things my whole life, I never would have done those things.
I guess the sum of all the above is that I have gained the following perspective from my disability: everyone has limitations, but the extent to which we let them define us is our own choice. I choose to look at what I can do, not what I can't do.
