BIG BRAIN, BROKEN BODY | Studying Law with Cerebral Palsy
When I arranged to meet with Sean Pevsner for the first time, I was nervous. I had never met anyone with a disability such as his--cerebral palsy. I didn't know how I might act, or how I might react to his disability. It was like asking, "How did I suppose I might act at first meeting another human?" But this was, dare I say, no ordinary human.
I knew that Sean was a quadriplegic; I knew that he worked with a personal assistant to communicate and function at home and...
more »When I arranged to meet with Sean Pevsner for the first time, I was nervous. I had never met anyone with a disability such as his--cerebral palsy. I didn't know how I might act, or how I might react to his disability. It was like asking, "How did I suppose I might act at first meeting another human?" But this was, dare I say, no ordinary human.
I knew that Sean was a quadriplegic; I knew that he worked with a personal assistant to communicate and function at home and in society; I knew that he was in his final year of law school at the University of Texas in Austin. So I arranged to meet Sean to find out who he was.
When I first approached him, he was sitting outside on the Lamar pedestrian bridge, his personal assistant, Michael Galante, by his side. They were there to study law.
I saw before me a 32 year old man strapped to his wheelchair, arms dangling outwards and often upwards, contorted and moving sporadically, involuntarily. He struggled to bring one arm forward so that I could shake his hand. I did so. I was awed.
He spoke to me directly, yet his words made no sense; they all sounded the same--just noises. But Michael understood, if not all the words than the way in which to decipher the word by having Sean spell it out, communicating with eye blinks and nods. I looked to Michael for the interpretation.
Our conversation was brief; we exchanged very little information about ourselves. But, having interacted with what seemed like a sound mind on a body in turmoil had struck me with the sense that this life was something to be documented and displayed; more people should be awed by these circumstances and struck by the implications of this story. Sean possessed amazing amounts of perseverance, persistence, and desire to pursue a career in law under such circumstances. My curiosity had been roused. Who was Sean? What made him fight so hard?
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