About ten years ago when I was an undergraduate in college in New York, I was working as a practice student at my University's Museum of Natural History. One day while I was working at the cash register in the gift shop, I saw an elderly couple come in with a little girl in wheelchair. As I looked closer at this girl, I saw that she was seated on her chair. I then realized she had no arms or legs, just a head, neck and the trunk of the human body. She was wearing a little white dress with the patterns of red roses and yellow dots. As the couple wheeled her up to me I was looking down at the register. I turned my head toward the girl and gave her a wink . As I took the money from her grandparents, I looked back at the girl, who was giving me the most beautiful, largest smile I have ever seen All of a sudden her _ was gone and all I saw was this beautiful girl, whose smile just melted me and almost instantly gave me a completely new sense of what life is all about. I immediately felt full of hope and confidence. She took me, a poor, unhappy college student, into her world, a world of smiles, love and warmth. That was ten years ago, but I still remember it clearly as if it happened just yesterday. I'm a successful business person now and whenever I get down and think about the troubles of the world, I think about that little girl and the remarkable lesson about life that she taught me. What was the writer a decade ago?
A worker working in a university. A teacher teaching in a college. A clerk working in a museum. A university student who had not yet taken a degree.