“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” -Maurice Switzer

We had been studying the nervous system at the time for the past week and a half now and now it was time to do a lab on it. Our teacher was absent that day but had left the dissection lab to do anyways with our sub. We were all excited coming in because as a middle school student without physical education this was the highlight of our classes. We walked in and immediately smelled a rotten stench as we sat down and the sub explained that for today’s dissections we were going to dissect baby pigs.  I was in a group with all girls who were disguised at the fact of cutting into a baby pig so I got the luxury of doing the dissection all by myself which I had wanted to begin with. The sub passed out the materials and the lab sheets and told us to follow the sheets and record our results. I designated all 3 girls to a task from recording the results to reading the instructions as I excitedly put on my gloves and other safety precautions and got prepared to go into surgery. We started by first weighing the baby pig and taking its measurement and then I made a shallow lateral incision down the ventral cavity opening the pig’s skin and exposing its muscle system. Moreover I continued the dissection to eventually cutting into the muscular system to expose its inside and finish the dissection. Then the sub challenged us to see if anybody could open up the skull to expose the brain undamaged and there was a group of arrogant white kids who thought of course they could do it. They sat there after the other trying to complete the task and all failed with some cutting too deep messing up the brain, and others getting frustrated and cracking it open giving up. I sat in the corner at the time in the back of the class trying to complete such task and one for them walked over to me demanding me to give him my pig because he had the best grades in the class so if there was anybody who could do it, it would be him even though he failed earlier. He claimed it was mistake and asked me the question of if he couldn’t do it then what made me think I could do it? I simply smirked and went back to work. 20 minutes had passed and it was now 11:26 and the lunch bell rang at 11:30 so I sat there in my sit waiting till the clock struck 11:29. Glancing at the clock strike 11:29 I quietly got up from my seat with my pig on my tray and went over to the young man and placed it right in front of him on his desk and told him Bon appetite as I left to go to lunch. The young man and most of the class sat there puzzled, perplexed, astonished and amazed with a perfectly smooth cut skull in half and a baby’s pig brain in front of them undamaged. What perplexed them the most was not the surgical procedure that had been performed but rather how an African American young man who sits in the back of the class and rarely talked could do something like that when them who were thought of as the smartest and what not couldn’t. That same day would be the day I would go home and watch Gifted Hands by Dr. Benjamin Carson and come to a realization of what I want to pursue in my life as a possible career choice.