by RMi Flores

Prologue: This is my one of my son’s essays in 2010, that he submitted to Stanford, UCLA & UCB wherein he was awarded UC Regents’ & Chancellor’s Scholarship. This essay also won awards and was published in Sacramento News & Review.

My perception of the world is not the same as everybody else’s. I come from a world of green fire trucks, purple skies, and red grass. Some say I come from the world of deficiency, but I’d rather stick with the notion that I come from the world of triumph. Though color blindness is currently a handicap that cannot be cured, I’ve overcome it in many different ways and have uncovered essential life lessons along the way.

When I began to drive, my parents became wary of my color blindness and how it may hinder my ability to see the various colors at the stop lights. Admittedly, I had a difficult time distinguishing between the green, yellow, and red lights at the intersection. However, I overcame this obstacle by viewing the position of the lights rather than the colors, with green being at the bottom, yellow at the middle, and red at the top. At nighttime, I viewed the stop lights by brightness, with green being a bright, whitish light, yellow being moderately bright, and red not being bright at all. Nowadays, I can detect the colors of the stop lights as well as anybody can and thus have transformed my so called inability into nothing more than a mere distraction.

Ever since that episode, I’ve always wondered why I couldn’t initially tell the difference between red, green, and yellow. Could I be the person seeing the true colors while everyone else sees them incorrectly? In my Biology class, I wouldn’t learn a definitive answer to this question, but I unearthed a passion that has made me strive for it. As my class studied heredity and genetics, I began to unearth an interest in researching abnormalities like my own. I began to think of science as a means to discovering more about the world rather than a tedious, memory-based, subject. At the end of my junior year, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to pursue a field in Biomedical Engineering and hopefully, solve the question that has riddled me throughout my entire life by one day unraveling the solution to color blindness.

I’ve learned to perceive the world through a different lens and thus have a different outlook on life itself. I’m not simply a colorblind person. I’m a living manifestation of a phenomenon that has shaped our world throughout its existence. This perception, as well as the experiences and lesson that come with it, has truly fueled my desire to succeed. Whenever I’ve faced a problem with my color blindness, whether it is identifying Renaissance paintings, sorting different types of chromosomes, or distinguishing colors on traffic lights, I’ve taken it as a challenge and succeeded each time through ingenuity, resourcefulness, and perseverance. As I’ll soon embark on this new chapter of life in college, I’ll always carry on this perseverant mentality that will guide me through any adversity I may encounter throughout my pursuits as an aspiring Biomedical Engineer with hopes that someday, I would be instrumental in helping others overcome disabilities like my own.