Samantha Schroth

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

The whir of a drill. Loud smacks from a hammer. Tools scrape and scratch the floor as they’re shuffled across it.

To you, these may seem like the sounds of nondescript carpentry work; maybe a remodel happening in a neighboring apartment. But as I sit at my desk in my medical school’s laboratory, listening to that carpentry symphony two lab benches away, I hear the sounds of inclusion.