It was in May 1976 that I first set foot on Canadian soil along with my mother, sister and brother. Dad had already been here for 10 months by then.

Even before we arrived, he had sent in applications to several universities in Ontario where I could begin my undergraduate studies. Without exception, every one of them sent back the same standard reply: “Students from India need to have completed a B.Sc with first class standing before they can be admitted into the B.Sc Degree program at our university. Admission denied.”

Needless to say this response was discouraging. I had already completed 13 years of schooling in India. Why would Ontario universities not consider that to be the equivalent of completing Grade 13 and grant me admission?

Dad came up with a strategy. Let’s show the universities that threw the book at us the syllabus of the courses I had taken. This way they can see that my Indian education was comparable to that of a typical Canadian Grade 13 graduate.  Perhaps that would sway the decision in my favour. I vividly recall paying a typist to put it all together and then air-mailing the papers to Canada. Still most of the universities had refused to budge.

When we arrived on May 19, Dad gave me the good news that the University of Waterloo had granted me admission, provided I passed the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language). I did…and received the offer of admission.

That summer, we decided to visit the University of Waterloo campus to see where I would be spending the next few years of my life. We stopped in at the Faculty of Science office to thank them for granting me admission when others would not.

The receptionist led us to the office of the Associate Dean, Dr. Brisbin, who was in charge of admissions. It was then that we discovered the reason behind the University of Waterloo’s decision to bend the rules and let me in.

The letterhead on which Dad had composed the cover letter was that of the United Church of Canada congregation in Englehart where he was serving at the time. This caught Dr. Brisbin’s attention because her brother-in-law was working at the denominational headquarters in Toronto. She decided to take a look at the enclosures.

When she started perusing the syllabus, she suspected that it could be close to what was being taught in Grade 13. To confirm her suspicion, she simply walked down the hallway to the office of a Professor of Physics who had been educated in India. He took one look at the documents and my transcript and assured her that she could safely grant me admission.

I am reasonably sure that every university to which I applied had on its Faculty of Science at least one professor of Indian origin in those days. But it was only one Associate Dean that took the time to consult a colleague.

In my second year, I was privileged to be taught Chemistry by Dr. Brisbin She was a great professor who was able to communicate the basics of Chemistry in an exceptionally simple manner. She did such a good job that I finished with a 100% mark on that introductory course!

Sad to say I have forgotten a lot of what I learned in CHEM 101, mainly because Chemistry and Theology do not exactly mix well in the course of practising ministry, unless we are talking about spontaneous combustions at certain church meetings, ha, ha!

However, I have never forgotten the extra effort that Dr. Brisbin took to walk down the hallway. It is that which makes her extraordinary in my books.

Dear DWOD friend, do you realize that all it takes for you to move from ordinary to extraordinary is an “extra” step? Ask Holy Spirit to show you what extra step you need to take today to help someone else to get an opportunity or to make progress on the road to their destiny. You too will be viewed as extraordinary by others in due course.

P.S: The picture accompanying this post is the only one of Dr. Brisbin I could find on the web. It was taken at a university reception in 2011, 35 years after our first meeting.