He got into a special program, and the Navy trained him to be a nuclear submarine operator. It was a six-year program (although he did not re- enlist after his four-year stint). He progressed quite well through the ranks and probably would have been at least a captain by now if he had stayed in. However, he decided to go back to college. Today Curtis is an engineer, and I’m still proud of my big brother.
* I made second lieutenant after only three semesters when it usually took at least four, and most ROTC cadets never reached that rank in six semesters.
CHAPTER 8
College Choices
I stared at the ten-dollar bill on the table before me, knowing I had to make a choice. And since I had only one chance, I wanted to make sure I made the right one.
For days I’d considered the matter from every possible angle. I’d prayed for God to help me. But it still seemed to come down to making one single decision.
An ironic situation faced me in the fall of 1968, for most of the top colleges in the country had contacted me with offers and enducements. However, each college required a ten-dollar non-returnable entrance fee sent with the application. I had exactly ten dollars, so I could apply only to one.
Looking back I realize that I could have borrowed the money to make several applications. Or, it’s possible that if I’d talked to representatives from the schools they might have waived the fee. But my mother had pushed the concept of self-reliance for so long I didn’t want to start out owing a school just to get accepted.
At that time the University of Michigan—a spectacular school and always in the top ten academically and in sports events — actively recruited Black students. And the University of Michigan waived the fees for in-state students who couldn’t afford to pay. However, I wanted to attend college farther away.
I looked hard at my future, knowing that I could get into any of the top schools but not knowing what to do. Graduating third in my class, I had excellent SAT scores, and most of the top colleges were scrambling to enroll Blacks. After college, with a major in premed and a minor in psychology, I’d be ready for medical school, and at last on the real road toward becoming a doctor.
For a long time it bothered me that I had graduated third in my senior high school class. It’s probably a character flaw, but I can’t help myself. It wasn’t that I had to be first in everything, but I should have been number one. If I hadn’t gotten so sidetracked by the need for peer approval, I would have been at the head of my class. In thinking toward college, I determined that would never happen again. From now on, I’d be the best student I was capable of being.
Several weeks flew by as I struggled over which college to send my application to, and by late spring I had narrowed the choice between Harvard and Yale. Either would have been great, which made the decision difficult. Strangely enough, my final decision hinged on a television program. As I watched College Bowl one Sunday night, the Yale students wiped the Harvard students off the face of the map with a fantastic score of something like 510 to 35. That game helped me to make my decision—I wanted to go to Yale.
In less than a month I not only had my acceptance at Yale to enter in the fall of 1969, but they offered me a 90 percent academic scholarship.
I suppose I should have been elated by the news. I was happy, but not surprised. Actually I took it calmly, and perhaps even a bit arrogantly, reminding myself that I had already accomplished just about everything I’d set out to do — a high scholastic record, top SAT scores, every kind of high school recognition possible, along with my long list of achievements with the ROTC program.
Campus accommodations befitted students of my stature. The student housing was luxurious, the rooms more like suites. The suites included a living room, fireplace, and built-in bookcases. Bedrooms branched off from the main room. Two to four students shared each suite. I had a room to myself.
I strode onto the campus, looked up at the tall, gothic-style buildings, and approved of the ivy-covered walls. I figured I’d take the place by storm. And why not? I was incredibly bright.
After less than a week on campus I discovered I wasn’t that bright. All the students were bright; many of them extremely gifted and perceptive. Yale was a great leveler for me, because I now studied, worked, and lived with dozens of high-achieving students, and I didn’t stand out among them.
One day I was sitting at the dining room table with several class members who were talking about their SAT scores. One of them said, “I blew the SAT test with a total of just a little over fifteen hundred in both parts.”
“That’s not too bad,” another one sympathized. “Not great, but not bad.”
“What did you get?” the first student asked him.
“Oh, 1540 or 1550, total. I can’t remember my exact math score.”
It seemed perfectly natural to all of them to have scores in the high ninety percentile. I kept silent, realizing that I ranked lower than every student sitting around me. It was my first awareness of not being quite as bright as I thought, and the experience washed away a little of my cockiness. At the same time, the incident only slightly deterred me. It would be simple enough to show them. I’d do what I did at Southwestern and throw myself completely into my studies, learning as much as possible. Then my grades would put me right up in the top echelon.
But I quickly learned that the classwork at Yale was difficult, unlike anything I’d ever encountered at Southwestern High School. The professors expected us to have done our homework before we came to class, then used that information as the basis for the day’s lectures. This was a foreign concept to me. I’d slid through semester after semester in high school, studying only what I wanted, and then, being a good crammer, spent the last few days before exams memorizing like mad. It had worked at Southwestern. It was a shock to realize it wouldn’t work at Yale.
Each day I slipped farther and farther behind in my classwork, especially in chemistry. Why I didn’t work to keep up, I’m not sure. I could give myself a dozen excuses, but they didn’t matter. What mattered was that I didn’t know what was going on in chemistry class.
It all came to a head at the end of the first semester when I faced final examinations. The day before the exam I wandered around the campus, sick with dread. I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was failing freshman chemistry; and failing it badly. My feet scuffed through the golden leaves carpeting the wide sidewalks. Sunlight and shadow danced on ivy-covered walls. But the beauty of that autumn day mocked me. I’d blown it. I didn’t have the slightest hope of passing chemistry, because I hadn’t kept up with the material. As the realization sunk in of my impending failure, this bright boy from Detroit also stared squarely into another horrible truth—if I failed chemistry I couldn’t stay in the premed program.
Despair washed over me as memories of fifth grade flashed through my mind. “What score did you get, Carson?” “Hey, dummy, did you get any right today?” Years had passed, but I could still hear the taunting voices in my head.
What am I doing at Yale anyway? It was a legitimate question, and I couldn’t push the thought away. Who do I think I am? Just a dumb Black kid from the poor side of Detroit who has no business trying to make it through Yale with all these intelligent, affluent students. I kicked a stone and sent it flying into the brown grass. Stop it, I told myself. You’ll only make it worse. I turned my memories back to those teachers who told me, “Benjamin, you’re bright. You can go places.”
There, walking alone in the darkness of my thoughts, I could hear Mother insist, “Bennie, you can do it! Why, son, you can do anything you want, and you can do it better than anybody else. I believe in you.”
I turned and began walking between the tall, classic buildings back to the dorm. I had to study. Stop thinking about failing, I told myself. You can still pull this off. Maybe. I looked up through a scatter of fluttering leaves silhouetted against the rosy autumn sunset. Doubts niggled at the back of my mind.
Finally I turned to God. “I need help,” I prayed.
“Being a doctor is all I’ve ever wanted to do, and now it looks like I can’t. And, Lord, I’ve always had the impression You wanted me to be a doctor. I’ve worked hard and focused my life that way, assuming that’s what I was going to do. But if I fail chemistry I’m going to have to find something else to do. Please help me know what else I should do.”
Back in my room, I sank down on my bed. Dusk came early, and the room was dark. The evening sounds of campus filled the quiet room—cars passing, students’ voices in the park below my window, gusts of wind rustling through the trees. Quiet sounds. I sat there, a tall, skinny kid, head in my hands. I had failed. I had finally faced a challenge I couldn’t overcome; I was just too late.
Standing up, I flipped on the desk lamp. “OK,” I said to myself as I paced my room, “I’m going to fail chemistry. So I’m not going to be a doctor. Then what is there for me?”
No matter how many other career choices I considered, I couldn’t think of anything else in the whole world I wanted more than being a doctor. I remembered the scholarship offer from West Point. A teaching career? Business? None of these areas held any real interest.
My mind reached toward God—a desperate yearning, begging, clinging to Him. “Either help me understand what kind of work I ought to do, or else perform some kind of miracle and help me to pass this exam.”
From that moment on, I felt at peace. I had no answer. God didn’t break through my haze of depression and flash a picture in front of me. Yet I knew that whatever happened, everything was going to be all right.
One glimmer of hope—a tiny one at that—shone through my seemingly impossible situation. Although I had been holding on to the bottom rung of the class from the first week at Yale, the professor had a rule that might save me. If failing students did well on the final exam, the teacher would throw out most of the semester’s work and let the good final-test score count heavily toward the final grade. That presented the only possibility for me to pass chemistry.
It was nearly 10:00 p.m., and I was tired. I shook my head, knowing that between now and tomorrow morning I couldn’t pull off that kind of miracle.
“Ben, you have to try,” I said aloud. “You have to do everything you can.”
I sat down for the next two hours and pored through my thick chemistry textbook, memorizing formulas and equations that I thought might help. No matter what happened during the exam, I would go into it determined to do the best I could. I’d fail but, I consoled myself, at least I’d have a high fail.
As I scribbled formulas on paper, forcing myself to memorize what had no meaning to me, I knew deep inside why I was failing. The course wasn’t that tough. The truth lay in something much more basic. Despite my impressive academic record in high school, I really hadn’t learned anything about studying. All the way through high school I’d relied on the same old methods — wasting my time during the semester, and then cramming for final exams.
Midnight. The words on the pages blurred, and my mind refused to take in any more information. I flopped into my bed and whispered in the darkness, “God, I’m sorry. Please forgive me for failing You and for failing myself.” Then I slept.
While I slept I had a strange dream, and, when I awakened in the morning, it remained as vivid as if it had actually happened. In the dream I was sitting in the chemistry lecture hall, the only person there. The door opened, and a nebulous figure walked into the room, stopped at the board, and started working out chemistry problems. I took notes of everything he wrote.
When I awakened, I recalled most of the problems, and I hurriedly wrote them down before they faded from memory. A few of the answers actually did fade but, still remembering the problems, I looked them up in my textbook. I knew quite a bit about psychology so assumed I was still trying to work out unresolved problems during my sleep.
I dressed, ate breakfast, and went to the chemistry lecture room with a feeling of resignation. I wasn’t sure if I knew enough to pass, but I was numb from intensive cramming and despair. The lecture hall was huge, filled with individual fold-down wooden seats. It would seat about 1,000 students. In the front of the room chalkboards faced us from a large stage. Also on the stage was a big desk with a countertop and sink for chemistry demonstrations. My steps sounded hollow on the wooden floor.
The professor came in and, without saying much, began to hand out the booklets of examination questions. My eyes followed him around the room. It took him a while to pass out the booklets to 600 students. While I waited, I noticed the way the sun shone through the small panes of the arched windows along one wall. It was a beautiful morning to fail a test.
At last, heart pounding, I opened the booklet and read the first problem. In that instant, I could almost hear the discordant melody that played on TV with The Twilight Zone. In fact, I felt I had entered that never-never land. Hurriedly I skimmed through the booklet, laughing silently, confirming what I suddenly knew. The exam problems were identical to those written by the shadowy dream figure in my sleep.
I knew the answer to every question on the first page. “Piece of cake,” I mumbled as my pencil flew to write the solutions. The first page finished, I turned to the next page, and again the first problem was one I had seen written on the board in my dream. I could hardly believe it.
I didn’t stop to analyze what was happening. I was so excited to know correct answers that I worked quickly, almost afraid I’d lose what I remembered. Near the end of the test, where my dream recall began to weaken, I didn’t get every single problem. But it was enough. I knew I would pass.
“God, You pulled off a miracle,” I told Him as I left the classroom. “And I make a promise to You that I’ll never put You into that situation again.”
I walked around campus for over an hour, elated, yet needing to be alone, wanting to figure out what had happened. I’d never had a dream like that before. Neither had anyone I’d ever known. And that experience contradicted everything I’d read about dreams in my psychological studies.
The only explanation just blew me away. The one answer was humbling in its simplicity. For whatever reason, the God of the universe, the God who holds galaxies in His hands, had seen a reason to reach down to a campus room on Planet Earth and send a dream to a discouraged ghetto kid who wanted to become a doctor.
I gasped at the sure knowledge of what had happened. I felt small and humble. Finally I laughed out loud, remembering that the Bible records such events, though they were few — times where God gave specific answers and directions to His people. God had done it for me in the twentieth century. Despite my failure, God had forgiven me and come through to pull off something marvelous for me.
“It’s clear that You want me to be a doctor,” I said to God. “I’m going to do everything within my power to be one. I’m going to learn to study. I promise You that I’ll never do this to You again.”
During my four years at Yale I did backslide a little, but never to the point of not being prepared. I started learning how to study, no longer concentrating on surface material and just what the professors were likely to ask on finals. I aimed to grasp everything in detail. In chemistry, for instance, I didn’t want to know just answers but to understand the reasoning behind the formulas. From there, I applied the same principle to all my classes.
After this experience, I had no doubt that I would be a physician. I also had the sense that God not only wanted me to be a physician, but that He had special things for me to do. I’m not sure people always understand when I say that, but I had an inner certainty that I was on the right path in my life—the path God had chosen for me. Great things were going to happen in my life, and I had to do my part by preparing myself and being ready.
When the final chemistry grades came out, Benjamin S. Carson scored 97—right up there with the top of the class.
CHAPTER 9
Changing the Rules
During my college years I worked at several different summer jobs, a practice I had started in high school where I worked i
n the school laboratory. The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I worked at Wayne State University in one of the biology laboratories.
Between high school graduation and entering Yale I needed a job badly. I had to have clothes for college, books, transportation money, and the dozens of other expenses I knew I’d face.
One of the counselors at our high school, Alma Whittley, knew my predicament and was very understanding. One day I poured out my story, and she listened with obvious concern. “I’ve got a few connections with the Ford Motor Company,” she said. While I sat next to her desk, she phoned their world headquarters. I particularly remember her saying, “Look, we have this young fellow here named Ben Carson. He’s very bright and already has a scholarship to go to Yale in September. Right now the boy needs a job to save money for this fall.” She paused to listen, and I heard her add, “You have to give him a job.”*
The person on the other end agreed.
The day after my last high school class my name went on the list of employees at the Ford Motor Company in the main administration building in Dearborn. I worked in the payroll office, a job I considered prestigious, or as my mother called it, big time, because they required me to wear a white shirt and tie every day.
That job taught me an important lesson about employment in the world beyond high school. Influence could get me inside the door, but my productivity and the quality of my work were the real tests. Just knowing a lot of information, while helpful, wasn’t enough either. The principle goes like this: It’s not what you know but the kind of job you do that makes the difference.
That summer I worked hard, as I did at every job, even the temporary ones. I determined that I would be the best person they had ever hired.
Gifted Hands Page 7