Colegiul Naional Vasile Lucaciu

- Baia Mare -

Lucrare scris pentru obinerea atestatului la limba englez

Ben Carson

Profesor coordonator: Absolvent:

Morar Claudia Iuga Lenua-Denisa
 2014

Contents

1. Prcis 3
2. Introduction 5
3. Early life 6
4. Medical career 9
5. Personal life ... 12
6. Writer ... 13
7. Carson Scholars Fund ... 15
8. Conclusion ... 16
9. Bibliography ... 17

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 Prcis

Why did I choose this subject?

In life, everyone has a model, a person who inspires us, who sets an example for us, a
person whose principles we admire and try to follow. My model in life is Ben Carson.

I discovered him by chance, but at the right moment. It happened 2 years ago, at a
presentation about his life made by some protestants from The Seventh-day Adventist
Church, presentation which caught my attention and made me want to find out more
information about Ben Carson, so this way I bought two of his bestsellers, read them and
watched the movie based on his autobiography, Gifted Hands.

The story about his life impressed me so much at that time that it made me cry. It had an
impact on my life and it made me realize that he would be my model in life, so following
his example will be a guide for me in the years ahead.

Ben Carson is a person who deserves all the respect, because he transformed the
impossible into reality and the hopes into fulfillment. During his early years, he
demonstrated that he could be someone in life, so that from the kid who once was striding
the Detroit slums, he became Dr. Ben Carson, the chief neurosurgeon who designed and
coordinated numerous succesful brain surgeries.

I appreciate this personality with all my heart, because he changed my life and made me a
more determined and stronger person and I never regret following his example in life,
because there are some similarities in our lives and sometimes I identify myself with him,
regarding the early years and the dream of having a succesful career, I want to become an
IT engineer, something which is very hard nowadays just as hard as being a neurosurgeon
which involves a lot of studying, working and last but not least faith in God.

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He inspired me every time simply because he surpassed his condition with Gods help
and through education. In his second bestseller, Think Big, I read something which
always guides my steps, some words the echo of which is strong: I am convinced that
knowledge is power to overcome the past, to change our own situations, to fight new
obstacles, to make better decisions. This words define the fact that only through
education we can become what we are really meant to be in this life.

For me, Ben Carson is more than a model, he is an example of life, because he taught me
the true values and virtues and first of all, to be an honest person and never forget where I
started from.

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 Introduction

Benjamin Solomon Carson, M.D., is one of the most famous pediatricians and
neurosurgeons in the world, professor and chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins
University Medical School.

He was born on September 18, 1951, in Detroit and was grown by his divorced mother
in a working class neighborhood. Even though his mother was undereducated, she determined
her sons, Ben and his brother, Curtis, to read in order to believe in themselves. She kept
telling them: You need to succeed! You simply weren't born to be losers!

Ben showed hope and promise from an early age and he went from being the poorest
in his class to being a graduate from both Yale University and the University of Michigan
Medical School. During his medical career he received numerous and important honors and
awards.

Dr. Ben Carson became the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins
Hospital in 1984, being the only black doctor in the history of this prestigious hospital who
could realize this at the age of 33. He is known all over the world for the first separation of
conjoined twins as the man with gifted hands.

Dr. Ben Carson contributed successfully to the development of John Hopkins Hospital,
being considered a phenomenon for this institution. His performance and mastery of ground-
breaking surgical procedures were recognized and respected. Dr. Ben Carson took so many
impossible operations with his dedication and talent given from God, giving a second chance
to a healthy and normal life to every child who was in his gifted hands.

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 Early life

Ben Solomon was born in Detroit, Michigan, on 18 th September 1951. He is the second
son of Sonya and Robert Solomon Carson and he grew up in his family in the hardened
climate of inner-city Detroit.

Sonya was raised in a very large family in Tennessee and she dropped out of school in
the third grade, because she had a poor condition and did not have so much hope and
opportunities for the future. In order to change her life she married Baptist Minister Robert
Carson, at the age of 13 and they moved to Detroit, Michigan and for a while they had
harmony and happiness in their marriage. Robert always bought his wife and boys gifts
without special reasons, so he was a very careful dad and husband, but after a time he began
to behave very strangely and he changed a lot, he didnt spend so much time at home with his
family, because he had a double life, another family, another wife and kids. After finding out
about his duplicitous life, Sonya decided to divorce, because she considered it would be the
best for her sons to take this step.

His parents divorced when he was 8 and his brother, Curtis, 10, so they were left to be
grown by their single mother from an early age. They were very poor and in order to have
enough money to provide for her boys, she took on two or three jobs at a time, most of
them were as a domestic servant. Sonya made a lot of sacrifices because there were days
when she didnt see her boys, she had to get up earlier to go to a job and came home
around midnight, going from one job to another.

Sonya Carson was an influential mother, because she made everything possible to bring
her boys up even if she led a modest life and had minimum of possibilities. Also, she
taught them that everything was possible if they used their brains and their intelligence.
Ben had a childhood dream of becoming a physician and spent a lot of time in the
hospital, because his family was on medical assistance, and every time when he heard
someone calling for the doctor by this suffix Dr. X, he was impressed and determined
that one day theyd be calling for a Dr. Carson.

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 Ben and Curtis Carson had a difficult experience with school. Ben was the poorest in his
class and ridiculed by his classmates. He became violent and attacked the other children
at the slightest provocation and he could not control his temper, but he started to read
quotes from the Bible regularly, which tempered him little by little. The violent behavior,
the disappointment and the anger were caused by the poor conditions and the bad
situation he had at school.

When he brought home a very bad report card, Sonya realised she must do something
in this regard. She knew her sons were not dumb and the reading has an influential impact on
the children life, so she told the boys that they were to take out two books each from the
library every week. She limited them to two or three TV programmes a week and insisted they
write a report on the books they read for her to read. The boys weren't at all keen on this but
their mother didn't give them a choice. It wasn't until many years later that Ben realised his
mother couldn't read well enough to read the reports.

Over time, Ben and his brother both began to enjoy reading and their school results in
all subjects began to improve. As Ben says in Gifted Hands: By reading so much, my
vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension. Soon I became the best
student in math when we did story problems.

Ben continued to read with hunger on all subjects and, through reading, he began to
understand that he could do and be anything he wanted.

He decided to become a doctor and learned little by little how to control his temper.
The anger and frustration he felt, particularly in relation to his family's poverty, was easier to
manage because he now realised two important things: that he had the power to change his
circumstances and that therefore the situation he was in was only temporary.

Ben graduated with honors from high school and attended Yale University, where he
got a degree in Psychology. He went on to the Medical School of the University of Michigan,
where his interest shifted from psychiatry to neurosurgery and then to pediatric neurosurgery.

His excellent hand-eye coordination and three-dimensional visual and reasoning skills
meant that he excelled as a surgeon and he was appointed Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery
at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore at the age of only 33.

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Dr. Ben Carson and his mother, Sonya Carson, the woman who changed the Carsons
brothers lives radically and to whom they are both grateful.

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Ben Carson in 1973, when he graduated from Yale with his wife-to-be, Candy, and his
mother, Sonya.

Medical career

In 1987, he made history in medicine with an operation to separate a pair of Siamese

twins. Patrick and Benjamin Binder were born in Germany as craniopagus twins. This means
they were joined at the back of the head, sharing intricate blood vessels flowing into and
draining within each of their bodies.

Previous operations to separate craniopagus twins had always failed, with one or both
babies dying from blood loss.

Dr. Carson developed a technique previously used only by his thoracic colleagues,
leading a 70-member surgical team in a 22-hour operation. The performed surgery was
successful and the twins are now able to have independent lives. Since separating the Binder
twins, Ben has operated many other pairs of craniopagus twins.

His other surgical innovations have included the first intra-uterine procedure to relieve
pressure on the brain of a hydrocephalic fetal twin, and a hemispherectomy, in which an infant
suffering from uncontrollable seizures has half of its brain removed. This stops the seizures,
and the remaining half of the brain actually compensates for the missing hemisphere.

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Dr. Ben Carson in surgery

Dr. Ben Carson

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 Ben Carson received numerous and important awards and honors during his medical
career. He is a member of the American Academy of Achievement, and the Horatio Alger
Association of Distinguished Americans. In 2000, he received the Award for Greatest Public
Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards. In
2008, the White House awarded Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's
highest civilian honor. In 2010, he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences
Institute of Medicine. Carson has been awarded 38 honorary doctorate degrees and dozens of
national merit citations.

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 Personal life

Ben Carson and his wife, Lacena Candy Rustin met in 1971 as students at Yale
University. In 1975 they married and after Ben got his medical degree, they moved to
Baltimore, Maryland, where he became a resident at John Hopkins University in 1977. They
have three sons: Ben, Jr., Rhoeyce and Murray. The Carsons are members of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church and Ben's faith has been an important factor in his career. His mother's

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motto was Learn to do your best and God will do the rest and she passed this philosophy
on to her sons.

In 2002, he had prostate cancer, a very malignant and aggressive form. He had
symptoms just for a week, but the doctors operated on it immediately. If they had waited it
would have been too late, bacause it turned out that it was very close to metastasis. The
experience with the cancer determined him to spend more time with his wife and their three
children.

In March 2013, Carson announced he would retire as a surgeon, stating I'd much
rather quit when I'm at the top of my game, and there's so many more things that can be
done. His retirement became official on July 1, with Carson saying he would leave the
decision of whether to go into politics in the hands of God, but much can be done outside
the political arena.

Ben Carson and his family

Writer

Ben Carson has written six bestselling books published by Zondervan, an international
Christian media and publishing company: Gifted Hands, Think Big, The Big Picture, Take
the Risk, America the Beautiful and One Nation. Since July 8, 2013, Carson has been a
weekly opinion columnist at The Washington Times.

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 In the autobiography Gifted Hands, Dr. Ben Carson demonstrates that our fate does not
depend on stars or statistics, but on ourselves. He admitted that he became a good
neurosurgeon because he discovered the innate ability which God had given him
and he improved that by working with the gifted hands. At the beginning of the book
there is a message for his mother: I dedicate this book to my mother, Sonya Carson,
who sacrificed her life for me and my brother to have a chance of success. A movie
based on his life story was made in 2009 with the same title: Gifted Hands: The Ben
Carson Story, with Cuba Gooding, Jr. in the leading role and Kimberly Elise as Bens
mother.

In Think Big, Dr. Carson reveals his personal philosophies on success, hard work and
faith in God. And who could do this better than someone who once was a ghetto child and
became the most famous specialist in pediatric neurosurgery? His principles in life are
concentrated in the acronym THINK BIG: T Talent/ time; H Hope; I Insight; N Nice;
K Knowledge; B Book; I In-depth learning; G God. This book is signed with the
message: To all the persons unheeded who gave me the opportunity to practise the
neurosurgery and to be socially active.

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 Carson Scholars Fund

Ben Carson and his wife started in 1994 the Carson Scholars Fund, when they read a
research about education in the United States and were alarmed by the findings. The

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 study showed that American students were the last #21 out of 22 countries at science and
maths. Also, they noticed that many school display cases were filled with large trophies
paying tribute to their sports teams achievements, while honor students only received a
pin or certificate.

The Carsons felt they must take action, so they built the Carson Scholars Fund on
moral principles. They were determined to start this, because just this way children could be
taught early to excel and would stay motivated and have a higher chance of educational
success later in life.

The fund gives scholarships to students in grades 4-11 who have humanitarian
qualities, academic concerns and excel despite of the social conditions. Winners receive a
$1,000 scholarship to be invested in higher education.

In his autobiography Gifted Hands, Dr. Carson wrote about the change which influenced
his life, the fact that he started reading regularly. So as the Carson Scholars Fund grew,
the Carsons established a second program The Ben Carson Reading Project. This
initiative started in 2000 and provides funding and support to schools to build and
maintain Ben Carson Reading Rooms warm, inviting rooms where kids can escape into
the world of books. Each room is colorfully decorated and promotes Dr. Carsons Think
Big philosophy.

Conclusion

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 Ben Carson is one of the most respected and successful doctors in the world, called the
man with gifted hands for his surgical skill. By his example of life he demonstrated the
impossible and showed an considerable power by overcoming poverty and becoming a
leading scholar and scientist who inspired millions.

He made medical history by being the first surgeon in the world to successfully
separate conjoined twins, the Binder twins, conjoined at the back of the head, craniopagus
twins.

Through Carson Scholars Fund he could help a lot of children by giving them
scholarships to continue studying and invest in higher education. Also, he advised all the
children to read, to use their brain, their intelligence to change their lives and the world,
to concentrate on the talent given by God and the most important thing in life, to always
pray, as he did, for wisdom and guidance in everything he did.

He has an incredible faith in God because He is the only one who helps him every time
and everywhere, he admitted that he has one person to please and thats God!. This
person is so wise, a thing so rare in a world which has lost its moral values, saying
that the Most important thing for me is having a relationship with God, to know that
the owner, the creator of the Universe loves you, sent His Son to pay for your sins. I
mean thats a very empowering thought. Knowing Him and knowing that He loves me,
gives me encouragement and confidence to move forward.

Ben Carson has changed my life radically since I discovered his life story, his
evolution from being the poorest in the class to being the most famous pediatric
neurosurgeon. The way he surpassed his initial condition and succeed in life, being
the Dr. Ben Carson who he just dreamed at when he was a young boy, things
realised with Gods help and his mothers influence impressed me so much that I
admitted that I will succeed in life and, one day, I will be a successful engineer, and
first of all, never forget where I started from, to be an honest person and to reach that
wisdom and guidance from God, as Ben Carson did. For me, Ben Carson is more than
a model, he is an example of life...

Bibliography:
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 Dr. Ben Carson & Cecil Murphey Povestea vieii mele. Mini nzestrate, editura
Via i sntate, Bucureti 2012, traducere de Cristina Iacob

Dr. Ben Carson & Cecil Murphey Gndete cuteztor, editura Via i sntate,
Bucureti 2011, traducere de Viorica Avrmiea

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, movie produced by The Hatchery Sony
Pictures Television

www.realbencarson.com

www.carsonscholars.org

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