In sixth grade — you’ll have to excuse me if I’m fuzzy on the details; this happened more than a decade ago – my English teacher gave our class a reading assignment about world-renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Eleven (or maybe 12) year-old me was instantly inspired. I thought about everything Dr. Carson had overcome, how he started so far at the bottom and rose so far to the top. I thought about him often as I grew up, even as my classmates seemed to forget. My family was really in to crime documentaries, which led me to an interest in medical oddities and mysteries (I was a weird kid), and sometimes Dr. Carson would be a featured surgeon. Looking at IMDB, I must have seen him in a couple shows: “Hopkins 24/7” and “Horizon.”