"Your son, Michael, will never be able to hear, speak, or do the things a normal hearing person would do,” my parents were told.  I was diagnosed as being profoundly deaf at the age of fifteen months.  My world seemed as if it had come to a narrow passage with very limited opportunities.  However, it was the beginning of something unforeseen and beyond normal.  All future dreams and visions seemed shattered, but they were actually expanding to a whole new dimension a normal-hearing person would never experience. 

I was the first child to receive the cochlear implant in Dallas at the age of two in 1991, and since then I have thrived in the mainstream world.  I have been in mainstream schools with all normal hearing students since the first grade and have been tremendously successful.  I feel like I have been immensely blessed to have a cochlear implant that can help me hear, speak, and communicate with others.  With this blessing, I feel a duty to participate in mainstream society and endeavor to be the best I can be in as many possible opportunities in the mainstream world.  I attended the International Business Academy, a highly sophisticated high school program for ambitious students while taking dual credit courses at Brookhaven Community College.  I graduated high school as one of the top ten students of my class and with honors.  Then, I went onto Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX to pursue a Bachelor's of Business Administration in Marketing.  I graduated from SMU in a total of three years with my BBA in Marketing and with honors.   

Mainstreaming allows me to live life to the fullest where I have unlimited opportunities to learn and excel.  I never let my deafness to handicap my abilities; I continue to move forward.  I owe my success to my loving family, my great doctor, outstanding speech therapists and audiologists, and Cochlear.