Diversity by Autumn

Diversity by Autumn - January 2025 Scholarship Essay

My undergraduate school offered something I had never seen before in my infinite hours of college searching. An autism studies minor. As a freshman premedical student I thought this would be a great future resume. It ended up being far more than that.
The professor that ran the minor, I aspire to be like her. She had a lucrative career but left it to educate youth on Autism and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. She taught me that many people do not have an equal playing field in the game of life. Of course I knew this, but I looked at people of differing abilities as patients. My professor showed me how to look through a different lens. Medicine looks to treat disability or help people to be more "normal". Through the lens of diversity we ask the question, "How can the world change to make things more equal for everyone?"
I will provide a simple example of how these perspectives are so drastically different. The medical field sees a person in a wheelchair as someone who simply cannot walk. They cannot take stairs, they have restricted access to higher places, etc. My new perspective sees an opportunity for the world to make things more equal for everyone. Install wheelchair ramps instead of stairs, make shelves shorter but wider, etc. These things do not limit access for "normal" people. They simply allow differently abled people to achieve the same thing that "normal" people can. It evens the playing field.
I took a step back from my premedical studies. I decided that I do not want to "fix" people. I want to change the system.