A Mentor Who Made Room for Me: From Learning Disabilities to Neurosurgery Dreams
by Arshi Kaur Chopra, M2
Have you ever reached the end of a paragraph and realized you haven’ t absorbed a single word? We’ ve all been there. The subsequent act of backtracking and rereading with a renewed focus is a familiar feat. It appears to be a shared human experience and for most, it’ s simple, right?
Now, imagine rereading that paragraph. You give it your full attention and pour every fiber of your being into understanding it, yet the meaning remains farther away than when you first started. You try again and again, but no matter how many times you read the words, they resist comprehension. Frustrating? Maddening, even. To this day, the greatest pain I’ ve ever felt was from my relentless struggle to understand a single sentence, willing myself to understand it with words searing into my mind like a brand. For nearly 16 years, I was made to believe I simply was not trying hard enough: that I lacked discipline, intelligence or focus. It was only after numerous evaluations and tests that I discovered I had learning disabilities.
The road to academic success was anything but easy. Peers scoffed when I sought accommodations at the disability resource center, as if I were cheating the system rather than leveling the playing field. Professors belittled me for asking them to clarify concepts, dismissing my questions as a sign of incompetence. Despite excelling academically, I was repeatedly told that attending medical school would be an unlikely feat for someone like me.
A beacon of light emerged during my senior year of college. A supervisor at my job, someone who believed in my capabilities, recommended me for a shadowing and research position in the Neurosurgery Department at the University of Louisville. That is how I met Dr. Brian Williams, the mentor who made a place for me, a student with learning disabilities. I once heard that it just takes one teacher to make a difference in a student’ s life. Dr. Williams was that teacher for me. He created an environment where I felt seen, not as someone who needed to be“ fixed,” but as someone with potential.
My very first assignment under his mentorship was to read and analyze 10 research articles. As I stared at the abstract of the first
24 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE