It was time to look the monster in the eye: I went to get evaluated and finally realized what had been holding me back all those years

Name: Goldie Burstein

Dream: Become a nurse

Location: Brooklyn, NY

If you knew me as a child, you wouldn’t believe that I’m the one telling this story. I was painfully shy.

I also adored babies and animals. During the summers my family spent in the Catskills, I’d nurture stray cats and tend to birds’ broken wings.

My dream was to turn my passion into a vocation by becoming a nurse. My parents, who were Holocaust survivors, discouraged me. They considered nurses to be glorified cleaning help — mopping floors and emptying bedpans. Not a career for a nice Jewish girl.

It didn’t help that school was difficult for me. Though I was bright, math and memorization were huge challenges. My academic struggles cast a shadow over my younger years, battering my self-esteem.

When my second child was in preschool, we suspected he’d also have a tough time in school. Intelligent and a little quirky, he was having a hard time reading, which stemmed from visual perception and processing difficulties.

I vowed that I would not let my son’s challenges limit his potential. We hired private tutors six days a week and enrolled him in art and karate. Our son’s education was a priority, so we cut back in other areas. I served a lot of macaroni for dinner.

I became my son’s advocate and got him the best support available, guided by the incredible Helen Ribowsky, PhD. His wonderful tutor, Faygie Waldman Horowitz, taught fractions through baking and ABCs through tactile activities. Today, my son is a successful psychologist and directs a large network of mental health clinics in Maryland.

Watching my son struggle caused something to click in my mind. I related to his way of learning. He needed things broken down; simply working hard was not enough. I saw myself in his struggles, because that was how I learned, too.

It was time to look the monster in the eye: I went to get evaluated and finally realized what had been holding me back all those years.

Being diagnosed with learning disabilities was a watershed moment for me. It validated my years of struggle. I wasn’t lazy or unmotivated — I had a real condition that hampered my efforts to learn.

This took me a while to process. I had given up my dream of nursing, and I was ruminating over what could have, should have, would have been.

I didn’t want to spend my life grieving for missed opportunities. I decided to plunge in.

Getting into nursing school was hard. I was 40, already a mother of five, and admissions were competitive. I needed a straight-A average on the prerequisites to have a shot.

I realized that admissions officers didn’t care how quickly you completed your prerequisites; they only looked at your grades and NLN score. So initially, I took one course each semester, mastering the material at my own pace.

Working with my son, I’d discovered what I needed in order to learn: extra study time, pre-reading, tactile memory aids, repeatedly writing down information. Goodness knows how many trees I killed during those years.

I studied twice as hard as everyone else and didn’t pay attention to what others were doing. I graduated from nursing school with honors and with two awards — in Pediatric Nursing and “the most determined, persevering student.”