Coming from a lover of all learning and a future teacher, school and all of the studying it encompasses means everything to me. A true perfectionist, I wanted to prove that my chronic illnesses would not keep me from succeeding in something that was so intrinsically personal to me: education. I knew before the age of four that I would be a teacher when I grew up. When I was diagnosed at fourteen, after suffering for nearly five undiagnosed years, I was told with the severity of my health issues, I likely would not graduate high school. Tears seared my cheeks hearing those brutal words. Here I was sitting on a cold table in a sterile white room with someone who didn’t even know me, telling me that I wouldn’t live out my lifelong dreams. I wanted to be valedictorian. Dropping out, not continuing on, however you look at it, were not visions in my head, nor would those doctor’s words taint my drive and dreams.