What Challenges Have You Overcome?
MARCH 5, 2014 5:06 AM March 5, 2014 5:06 am
Kayla Montgomery (4) has become a top runner for Mount Tabor High School despite having multiple sclerosis. Related ArticleCredit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
The Times is full of articles every week about people who have overcome challenges of all kinds and have learned from failure.
What challenges have you overcome? Maybe they haven’t been as outwardly dramatic as that of this teenager, who runs track even though her multiple sclerosis causes her to collapse after every race, but perhaps they have felt dramatic and difficult to you.
In “For Runner With M.S., No Pain While Racing, No Feeling at the Finish,” Lindsay Crouse writes:
• When a pack of whip-thin girls zipped across the finish of the 1,600-meter race at a recent track meet here, the smallest runner’s legs wobbled like rubber, and she flopped into her waiting coach’s arms. She collapses every time she races.
Kayla Montgomery, 18, was found to have multiple sclerosis three years ago. Defying most logic, she has gone on to become one of the fastest young distance runners in the country — one who cannot stay on her feet after crossing the finish line.
Because M.S. blocks nerve signals from Montgomery’s legs to her brain, particularly as her body temperature increases, she can move at steady speeds that cause other runners pain she cannot sense, creating the peculiar circumstance in which the symptoms of a disease might confer an athletic advantage.
But intense exercise can also trigger weakness and instability; as Montgomery goes numb in races, she can continue moving forward as if on autopilot, but any disruption, like stopping, makes her lose control.
“When I finish, it feels like there’s nothing underneath me,” Montgomery said. “I start out feeling normal and then my legs gradually go numb. I’ve trained myself to think about other things while I race, to get through. But when I break the motion, I can’t control them and I fall.”
At the finish of every race, she staggers and crumples. Before momentum sends her flying to the ground, her coach braces to catch her, carrying her aside as her competitors finish and her parents swoop in to ice her legs. Minutes later, sensation returns and she rises, ready for another chance at forestalling a disease that one day may force her to trade the track for a wheelchair. M.S. has no cure.
Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …
— What do you think about Kayla Montgomery’s determination to run, even if she collapses after every race?
— Whom else do you admire who has confronted a challenge and overcome it?
— When have you ever faced a challenge of some kind Consider not just physical challenges, but emotional, academic, interpersonal or artistic challenges as well. What did you do? What happened in the end?
— If you’ll be applying to college sometime soon, you may be interested to know that one Common Application prompt reads, “Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?” You might consider answering those questions here, too, perhaps as practice for your college essay.
