Sherry Chen (陳攸華) may only be 120cm tall, but as the 50-year-old Taiwanese professor of network learning technology says: “The number decides my physical size, not the heights my life has attained.”
Known as the “smallest professor in Taiwan,” Chen suffers from achondroplasia — a bone growth disorder that causes the most common type of dwarfism. She recounts her life struggle in a book launched on Monday to encourage people with rare diseases to be brave and face up to life.
Chen said she was often a victim of bullying at school during her childhood because she was smaller than others the same age, being called “shorty” by her classmates.
Photo: CNA
That was not nearly the worst thing, she said.
REJECTION
“When I planned to take the civil servant’s qualification exams when I was studying at Fu Jen Catholic University, I was rejected because one of the requirements was: ‘Those of abnormal height cannot register for the test,’” Chen said.
“I was upset for a whole week,” she said, but she then decided to continue her education in the US.
Chen earned a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Maryland and a PhD at the University of Sheffield in England at the age of 39.
She then taught at Brunel University in west London for eight years, before becoming chair professor at National Central University’s (NCU) Graduate Institute of Network Learning Technology in 2009.
In May last year, she was granted an Outstanding Scholar Award — locally called Taiwan’s Nobel Prize — by the Taipei-based Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship.
In a new book titled 120cm of Bravery (120公分的勇氣), written by Chang Li-chun (張麗君) and based on Chen’s narration, the professor cited her mother as the source of her courage.
Whenever children bullied her when she was little, her mother comforted her and encouraged her to ignore their verbal attacks, said the woman described by NCU president Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧) as “the NCU’s little giant.”
“Don’t get upset, because you will be a better person than them in the future,” her mother told her.
ENCOURAGEMENT
Talking about the book during the launch event in Taipei, which was attended by many people with rare diseases, Chen said she wanted to convey the message that patients with rare diseases “can still achieve remarkable things.”
“The darkness before the dawn is the darkest, but don’t be afraid of that period of darkness,” Chen said.
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