Each semester, the International Essential Tremor Foundation presents four scholarships to students with essential tremor. The scholarships represent hope for the future, and provide support to these students during a pivotal time in their lives. As part of the scholarship application process, each applicant is asked to write an essay that answers the question, “How has essential tremor affected my life?” The following essay is from one of our spring 2018 scholarship recipients.
By Brogan Speraw,
Freshman at Ohio University,
Athens, OH
As I enter my freshman year of college, I’m anxious for the trails ahead. What classes to take, what will finals be like, how different will the classroom setting be from the one I’ve grown accustomed to. But one tends to worry me more than the others: how will my tremors affect my college life?
My tremors make my penmanship very poor, and my fine motor skills suffer as well. This has caused many challenges in my life, including struggling in art classes due to my inability to draw effectively. In the past, my classmates would ridicule me for my shaking hands by making comments about how I shake or how I must be nervous, or how I could be used as a seismometer (an earthquake detector). But, being the person I am, I have learned to take the ridicule and laugh with them as well, often times joining in and having a better time because of it. I have had to learn how to explain the shaking of my hands. With age, I have also learned not to be embarrassed, but proud of the strong person I have become because of my condition.
Normal everyday tasks for most tend to be a challenge for me, one of them being eating in public. I tend to choose what I eat in public very carefully. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve also learned how to live with eating and tremors significantly better, more often than not, ordering foods that I know will challenge me simply for the challenge itself.
I have a 504 plan that will follow me throughout college and the workforce. My disability will never go away, but I haven’t allowed this disability to hold me back. My neurologist predicted that I wouldn’t be able to write by my freshman year of high school, but I continued to write daily up until my junior year. It was during my junior year that I had to start doing a majority of my work by typing on a laptop. For my tests with answer choices that need bubbled-in, the school provides me with a scribe. Although this disability is a daily struggle, I have maintained a GPA of 3.967.
During college, I will continue to refuse to allow my disability to hold me back. It may be a challenge, but it is a challenge I intend to take on wholeheartedly, doing my best to make sure I succeed in all my academic endeavors.
I have been blessed with the determination to keep fighting the challenges that have been put in front of me, therefore being able to complete whatever I put my mind to.
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Interested in supporting students with ET during their educational journey? Make a donation to the ET scholarship fund online.