Molly – What’s the best advice you have for others in your situation?

At first, I was really stubborn about doing things by myself, and the way that I learned to do things by myself was by basically not accepting help.  So when I learned to get dressed, I would close the door to my room, not let my parents come in, and spend two hours on my bed on a Saturday morning, just trying to get dressed. And on the weekdays I usually would set a time limit, I had 20 minutes to try to get dressed, and then if by the end of 20 minutes, my mom comes into help me, or something like that.  Just so it was a more manageable amount of time when I had to get up and go to school.  At the beginning, it was by refusing to let anybody help me and that got me a lot of places in terms of figuring things out.  A lot of times I figured things out through desperation—“I have no other way to put my socks on, I’m just going to bite them.”  And, for a while, I put my socks on with my teeth, who knew that was going to work?  It wasn’t until you get to that last point where you’re really frustrated that you go with something else.  And I think that just setting the bar high.  I was expecting that I’m going to learn something new and do something better, and not letting someone tell you that you can’t.  I think you’ll get a lot more places than you think you would.  And so by kind of saying—I wanted to go abroad and I was like, “I’m going to go study abroad in another country,” and people were like, “Oh, well you can’t do that.”  I was like, “Well, I’m going to figure it out.”  I think that’s kind of the attitude that you have to have.  Otherwise, you’re going to end up with some sort of ceiling.