here's the story of Ben Carson: If Carson seemed destined for any position when he was a child growing up on the streets of Detroit, he appeared most qualified for the role of putting someone else in the hospital-or even the morgue. In his profile on the American Academy of Achievement website, it was noted that Carson "had a temper so violent that he would attack other children, even his mother, at the slightest provocation." No doubt some of his anger stemmed from the conditions of his childhood. Carson's father left his mother, Sonya, when he was only eight; his mother, who had only a third-grade education, was faced with the daunting task of raising her sons Ben and Curtis by herself. She worked as a maid, sometimes holding two or even three jobs to support her family. The family was poor, and Carson often endured the cruel taunts of his classmates.
A further source of frustration in Carson's life was his poor performance as a student. During a two-year period when his family lived in Boston, he fell behind in his studies. By the time he returned to elementary school in Detroit, he was, according to his profile on the American Academy of Achievement website, "considered the 'dummy' of the class." It was a position for which he "had no competition," he related in his book Gifted Hands.
After Carson brought home a report card of failing grades, his mother quickly limited her sons' television viewing and required them to read two books a week. The boys then had to give written reports to their mother on what they read. While other children were outside playing, Sonya Carson forced her boys to stay inside and read, an act for which her friends criticized her, saying that her sons would grow up to hate her. Carson later realized that because of her own limited education, his mother often could not read her sons' reports, and was moved by her efforts to motivate them to a better life.
Before long, Carson moved from the bottom of the class to the top. However, there was resentment from his classmates at the predominantly white school. After awarding Carson a certificate of achievement at the end of his freshman year, a teacher berated his white classmates for letting an African-American student outshine them academically. In his high school years and later, Carson faced racism in a number of situations, but as he said in his 1996 interview with the American Academy of Achievement, "It's something that I haven't invested a great deal of energy in. My mother used to say, 'If you walk into an auditorium full of racist, bigoted people … you don't have a problem, they have a problem."'
Despite his academic improvement, Carson still had a violent temper. In his interview with the American Academy of Achievement, he recalled trying to hit his mother over the head with a hammer because of a disagreement over what clothes he should wear. In a dispute with a classmate over a locker, he cut a three-inch gash in the other boy's head. However, at the age of 14, Carson reached a turning point after he nearly stabbed a friend to death because the boy had changed the radio station.
Terrified by his own capacity for violence, he ran home and locked himself in the bathroom with the Bible. "I started praying," he said in his American Academy of Achievement interview, "and asking God to help me find a way to deal with this temper." Reading from the Book of Proverbs, he found numerous verses about anger, but the one that stood out to him was "Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city." After that, he realized he could control his anger, rather than it controlling him.
With his outstanding academic record, Carson was in demand among the nation's highest-ranking colleges and universities. He graduated at the top of his high school class and enrolled at Yale University. He had long been interested in psychology and, as he related in Gifted Hands, decided to become a doctor when he was eight-years-old and heard his pastor talk about the activities of medical missionaries.
^^^long story short, he's now one of the world's most prominent neurosurgeons. he's probably worth millions.
