{"id":4056,"date":"2015-06-11T09:41:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T13:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/?p=4056"},"modified":"2015-06-11T09:41:32","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T13:41:32","slug":"2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette’s\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS<\/strong><\/a>) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award contest. I hope you enjoy it!<\/em><\/p>\n

Tourette’s hasn’t played a small part in my life, it’s played in a majority of it. I like to think that I have it\u00a0under control and that it doesn’t control me, but it still dictates most of my daily life. I don’t do these\u00a0things because I want to, but because I feel the need to. I have to.<\/p>\n

People sometimes give me funny looks and ask if I’m alright. I’ll just nod because if I told them I’m not\u00a0alright and that I feel bothered all the time, they wouldn’t understand. Because they can’t understand\u00a0what I am going through is the reason why I try to hide it. Suppress it.<\/p>\n

I also have OCD so during school, most of my time is either spent doing tics or checking things, or,\u00a0trying to stop these things from happening. I get so caught up in my image that I forget to actually live\u00a0my life sometimes. Medication and therapy has helped me come a long way, but there is only so far\u00a0someone can walk away from their true self. This is who I am, and no amount of medication or therapy\u00a0can change that.<\/p>\n

People will sometimes ask me I if took my medication that day. I take it at night anyway but the point\u00a0is that I can’t change who I am, I’m stuck like this. If I could have changed, trust me, I would have right\u00a0when I heard that diagnosis.<\/p>\n

The physical effects are hard enough to bear but couple that with the mental hardship of knowing\u00a0almost no one understands and that you can’t fix your problem. It eats away at you. The social stigma\u00a0associated with mental disorders doesn’t do me any justice either. People stereotype me for something I\u00a0can’t change, much like an ethnicity or nationality. No one wants to take into account that everyone is\u00a0different, and that you don’t have to judge everyone all the time. Everyone just wants to make\u00a0themselves feel superior and target people like me in the process. The result of being a potential target\u00a0of ridicule has led me to better understand and accept others better. I may still laugh at how someone\u00a0dresses or holds themselves, but I will never laugh at things that they can’t change, I just won’t. I’ve\u00a0been through what they have and have realized,they don’t need any more hardship in their lives,\u00a0especially for something that can’t go away.<\/p>\n

Tourette’s might have brought me suffering, but it’s also brought me the ability to feel empathy towards\u00a0those suffering around me. It has molded me to be the person that I am today and in conjunction with a\u00a0recent death in the family, has guided me to select medicine as a career so I will be a pre-med major in\u00a0college.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award contest. I hope you enjoy it! Tourette’s hasn’t played a small part in my life, it’s played… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":491,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[18,69,76,116,143,212,216,264,287,314],"yoast_head":"\n2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette's\u201d - Teens4TS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette's\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Teens4TS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"EricF\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"EricF\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"EricF\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/person\/2eceab340b80ef509a7528a6b2a26441\"},\"headline\":\"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette’s\u201d\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\"},\"wordCount\":510,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"Acceptance\",\"College\",\"Confidence\",\"Essays\",\"Goals\",\"NJCTS\",\"OCD\",\"Scholarships\",\"Stigma\",\"Tics\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Teens\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\",\"name\":\"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette's\u201d - Teens4TS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00\",\"description\":\"This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette’s\u201d\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/\",\"name\":\"Teens4TS\",\"description\":\"For Teenagers with TS, by Teenagers with TS\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Teens4TS - New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2018\/03\/njcts-bug.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2018\/03\/njcts-bug.png\",\"width\":1080,\"height\":537,\"caption\":\"Teens4TS - New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"}},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/person\/2eceab340b80ef509a7528a6b2a26441\",\"name\":\"EricF\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/690d23bd7c91c6a7603d372a3715cc80?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/690d23bd7c91c6a7603d372a3715cc80?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"EricF\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette's\u201d - Teens4TS","description":"This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette's\u201d","og_description":"This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award","og_url":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/","og_site_name":"Teens4TS","article_published_time":"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00","author":"EricF","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"EricF","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/"},"author":{"name":"EricF","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/person\/2eceab340b80ef509a7528a6b2a26441"},"headline":"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette’s\u201d","datePublished":"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00","dateModified":"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/"},"wordCount":510,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#organization"},"keywords":["Acceptance","College","Confidence","Essays","Goals","NJCTS","OCD","Scholarships","Stigma","Tics"],"articleSection":["Teens"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/","url":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/","name":"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette's\u201d - Teens4TS","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00","dateModified":"2015-06-11T13:41:32+00:00","description":"This is the essay I submitted to the NJ Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders (NJCTS) for their 2015 Children\u2019s Scholarship Award","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/2015-njcts-childrens-scholarship-award-essay-living-with-tourettes\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"2015 NJCTS Youth Scholarship Award Essay: \u201cLiving with Tourette’s\u201d"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#website","url":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/","name":"Teens4TS","description":"For Teenagers with TS, by Teenagers with TS","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#organization","name":"Teens4TS - New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome","url":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2018\/03\/njcts-bug.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2018\/03\/njcts-bug.png","width":1080,"height":537,"caption":"Teens4TS - New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/person\/2eceab340b80ef509a7528a6b2a26441","name":"EricF","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/690d23bd7c91c6a7603d372a3715cc80?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/690d23bd7c91c6a7603d372a3715cc80?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"EricF"}}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/491"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/njcts.org\/teens4ts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}