Presentation Location: Grand Valley State University Allendale, Michigan

I think there's a stereotype that society and I both bought into about a person with a disability, that they were constantly working to be "normal" in spite of their disability.

My niece has Down Syndrome, and I see now that I thought it made me some sort of a god or goddess among the common folk because I understood disabilities and accepted them. Wrong! It wasn't until this morning when Jon came and spoke to our liberal studies class at Grand Valley that I realized I was generalizing disabilities and secretly believing "those people" had something wrong with them and needed to be cured. Jon told these hilarious stories of stunts that he's pulled and funny things that have happened to him, and just generally shared about his life. It was very important for me because I finally realized that people really don't need to be cured of who they are.