Let me tell you a story. For the sake of privacy I will keep names and places out of it, but if you know me in real life, chances are you already know the names and places. But for the sake of those who are just passing through, I will leave such details out.

It's about halfway through the semester and about midway is when we all are supposed to meet with our academic advisers. Since I am a new student at this school I hadn't met my adviser previously. So I set up an appointment and meet with her. We descend a flight of stairs to her office (she was in her classroom prepping for a lab when I found her), and she takes a little extra time. "Oh, sorry, my knees are bad," she says to me.

"It's okay, I'm not too good at stairs either," I respond, in an attempt to make her feel better.

I then continue to explain to her about my visual disability. I don't have depth perception so sometimes I have to do a great deal of guesswork about my surroundings.

"Oh," she says, "I don't think you can be a doctor with that".

I mentally stumble a little bit. This woman hardly knows me and already she is using definitive language with me. I'm a little upset, but decide to go on with the meeting.

She examines my ACT scores (which, mind you, are from three years ago). She asks me about my class rank from high school and says, "so, I assume you got a 23?"

"Actually, I got a 30," I say. The score is out of 36.

No big deal. We continue. She stops at my science section score and says, "why did you choose your weakest subject to major in? Did you just want a challenge?" Now I am a little offended. She has my college grades right in front of her, my A's in all my chemistry and biology classes, and yet, she is still judging me based on my high school performance, on a test that truthfully hardly means a thing.

The meeting continues and she persists in saying things that are a little offensive to me. She maintains a condescending tone that I do not appreciate. I leave her office quite upset.

Now, stop before you roar at me about how it's not my adviser's job to coddle me. Yes, I am aware. But it is certainly not her job to discourage me and make me feel I am not where I am supposed to be.

I completely accept that I might not have what it takes to become a doctor. Something may present itself too much of a challenge for me. But right off the bat I cannot have doubts being placed in my head like that. As cheesy as it is, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Let me take that shot.

I realize that that meeting might have been a fluke. Maybe she was having a bad day. Or maybe I was having a bad day so I misinterpreted the things she was telling me. But I did learn something very important.

Not everyone is going to be on your side. Maybe some people will start off not on your side and end up on your side. Or vice versa. So I don't know how this is going to turn out. But I do know that I need to remember that I am always on my side. So in general, as a rule, do not let people sway your internal opinions, how you feel inside. I don't want to let anyone take away my desire to try.