“Gifted Hand”

The book Gifted Hands tells you a little about what Ben Carson went through during his life. The
beginning of the story, explains that Ben was a poor kid who grew up in the streets of Detroit.
Sonya, Ben’s mother had seemed to work constantly. She worked almost 24/7 to support Ben &
his brother Curtis. They were very poor. The job that she works at did not pay very well. Carson
did not do too well in school. He seemed to struggle a lot, and kids always made fun of him by
calling him by the name of “dumb kid.” Up until he reached the age of 11 his mother, and a few
of his school teachers helped motivate him into developing an interest in school. He than began
to start doing well, and soon kids stop calling him names. His classmates also started to come to
Ben for help. At a point of time, Ben and his older brother Curtis seemed to lack school work &
did very horrible. That is when their mother realized it and laid down a rule. Her rule was that
they only got to watch a certain amount of television a week, and had to read a certain amount of
books along with writing a report on every book they had read. With their mother’s help, it made
them enjoy reading & writing. They soon began to be good readers. And that was the time when
Ben discovered he had an interest in science.

Ben soon did very well in class. His grades were poor, and now he was actually at the top of the
class. He couldn’t believe it. That was his goal to reach the top. His grades were so good that by
the time of high school, Ben received a full scholarship to attend many colleges. Ben decided to
attend Yale University, where he then met a girl named Candy. Later on in the story, Ben decides
to ask Candy for her hand of marriage. Although Ben was top of the class he soon lost that
advantage & began to do poorly once again during freshmen year at Yale. Ben went to Church
quite often during his college years. He soon converted into Christianity. Ben finally graduated
from Yale in the year of 1973. Carson’s dream was to become a doctor. So, he then went onto
medical school. After medical school, Ben headed towards a school that is very hard to get into.
At his surprise, he got accepted to John Hopkins, where he faced his most difficult surgery. Ben
was sent to doing surgery on a little girl by the name of Miranda. They explained how she had
hundreds of seizures a day, since she was little. That surgery given on Miranda was known as the
“hemispherectomy.” Ben Carson's story is genuinely inspirational, and a strong testament to the
power of self determination and parental influence. By his own admission, he could have had a
much different. Instead, he applied himself, whipped on by his willful mother, and he has
become a modern day success story. We could all learn something from him. He is an inspiration
to young and less-privileged people. The authors cite several fascinating surgeries that Carson is
involved in, which make headlines! However, the authors emphasize Carson's respect for team
work. The Carson story has several lessons, one of which is "There's always room for
improvement". Another lesson is "Hard work yields positive results", and so on.