Okay, I’ll make this very brief. Though I’ve been remarkably free of illness, I can’t say the same about disability. Turns out your cerebellum, nervous system and muscles have to work together pretty closely to let you do things, but mine are kind of like a bunch of 4-year-olds attempting a relay race. It’s not some massive struggle to overcome, though you never realize how many places have stairs until you navigate them on wheels. It also hasn’t led to some massive realization about me and my purpose in life. But it has led to a lot of pretty awesome experiences. Riding on the wheelchair-accessible bus let me meet classmates I never would have met, which led me to be a peer tutor in the special education classroom and to design and 3-D print a variety of assistive devices for writing, cooking, and dressing. Those missed classes for doctors appointments helped give me the medical knowledge to write a literature review on frontotemporal dementia as part of an MIT summer program. Figuring out new ways to play my instrument, which eventually meant temporarily leaving ensembles, actually made me practice so much more than I had before because I realized how much I loved it. Figuring out how to adapt all sorts of activities also made me really good at finding alternative learning strategies, something that has been invaluable when tutoring kids who don’t necessarily think in the same way their teachers do. And don’t even get me started on sit-skiing—best invention ever. Half of my time is spent falling, but figuring out how to get up is part of the fun. I never would have chosen this path for my life, but in some way it’s made me exceptional because being ordinary was already out of the question. And now, to what this scholarship specifically would mean to me. It represents not having to worry so much about the copays and other medical expenses affecting my ability to pay for college. It represents less time spent working to offset my debt and more time spent mentoring robotics teams, designing assistive technology, and doing neuroscience research. It represents that in a decade, my patients and their parents will be able to see someone like them who can help them imagine a happier, more independent future. And maybe most importantly, it means that someone believes in me and my ability to succeed. If I don’t get this scholarship, it won’t the end of the world for me. I’m confident in my ability to make paying for college work. But if you decide that I’m the right person for it, I won’t let the funding go to waste.