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Admission Essay
One of the most challenging things is failing to build social interactions and associations as a result of disability. Looking different from the mainstream society, often in a negative way or through failure of speech, sight, knowledge, and other senses incapacitates one’s confidence and gradually kills the power to interact. My story is a similar incidence where speech impairment made it hard to develop confidence and was an intuitive struggle throughout low and middle school. It was around 4th grade when my mathematics instructor recommended I undertake speech therapy in effort to build strong communication and interaction skills. The advice from the teacher came after the realization that I was suffering from severe stuttering characterized by disfluency, syllable and sound repetitions, blocks, prolongations, and physical tension. The speech impairment of stuttering gave rise to secondary conditions like frustration, negative reaction(s), it reduced verbal output, and influenced situational avoidances. Other behavioral tendencies pushed by stuttering included facial grimacing, continuous eye blinks, and unnecessary transitions in sound and pitch.
At the very beginning I did not acknowledge stuttering and thought I was similar to fellow students. It however came a point where fellow students in fourth and fifth grades showed negative responses whenever I spoke and viewed me as a physically and emotionally incapacitated student.

I must admit that after communicating with my mother about the speech impairment, she partly linked it to either the death of my father the previous year, and due to bilingualism given the fact that I was a Latino and had fluency in English. My mother also believed the stammer came as a result of my brain which was working too fast and processing information at an incredible speed. It is surprising that I took that as a fact and gradually developed confidence in speech. At the end of 7th grade and throughout middle school my mother encouraged me to laugh whenever I stuttered or stammered and to have confidence because I was unique and competitively different than fellow peers. It hence followed that I embraced the stammering and sometimes laughed in the middle of continued involuntary repetition of sounds and words. It was initially challenging to humor the stammer and to create a humorous notion to fellow students. However through time, my classmates liked that I stammered and sometimes laughed in a positive and acknowledging manner. They would soon elect me as the most talkative and humorous student in the entire class and further endorsed me as a school-spirited student.
It is ironic that one single thing that helped counter my stutter is participation in music classes and sessions. Music made it possible to regulate my pronunciation of words and sounds, and I was able to develop the verbal skills of speaking slowly and confidently and not losing the meaning of my communication. I have never met any other person with a similar problem until 8th grade when a fellow female student thought I was imitating and making fun of her. She would later come to understand I had a similar problem and we nurtured a close friendship because of our similarities. I must admit that occasional stutter, albeit challenging when communicating to new persons, has helped me to become more competitive. The verbal and speech impairment have enabled me to create my own position in the mainstream society and to find my space in the world. What motives me to become more competitive in a society of people with exceptional fluency is the fact that my mother grew up in poverty and struggle. According to her, she has been through worse struggles and limitations and she views my stuttering as an advantage to create insight and prove myself worthy in a society of fluent speakers.
I would later come to secure a job as a telephone operator as a result of constantly building and nurturing of solid communication and verbal skills. The experience as a telephone operator made it possible to talk to people from diverse backgrounds and to cultivate the much needed experience of multi-ethnic communication. The life experience in major cities like Ohio, Oscar and Winesburg made it possible to appreciate there is truly a unique strength in every diversity. More plainly I understood that despite facing a stuttering problem, there was something incredibly beautiful in that ugliness. The above knowledge offered me the confidence and the assurance to build meaningful relationships with fellow classmates and to brand myself as humorous and talkative personality. The limitations I faced earlier during my studies enabled me to develop unique philosophy, skills, and capabilities that have sustained my life throughout the years. One philosophy I champion is that everyone is unique and our diversity and differences are what makes the world a really inspiring and integrated place.
I have a story to tell. I am willing to use what many may term as ‘verbal impairment’ to increase tremendous opportunities for myself and to find a position in a highly contested society. Earlier in middle school I abhorred that fellow students would show pity on my stuttering which influenced their perspective of me as a disadvantaged student. I strongly believe the same way I challenged the perspective of fellow peers is the same way I will find my position in a plethora of platforms; workplaces, conferences, group meetings, social gatherings, and in future career undertakings. Stammering as a problem has enabled me to be stronger and wiser and to read the perception of others towards me. That way I have the confidence, experience, and skills to enable the society [and those around me] to view the stuttering, not as a limitation but as a strength. It is neither by accident nor through sheer good luck that I was branded the most humorous, talkative, and school-spirited. I plan to constantly use that experience and the stuttering problem to find myself and to tap into that single strength that lies in every adversity. That is my story.