Summer Update from Brian

Things have calmed down for me over the last couple of months. I was pretty busy with finishing up classes and continuing with therapy at Shepherd, along with my electric stimulation device as well as making the trip up to Raleigh for the 4th annual Hope To Walk golf event in May.

I thankfully finished up with my project management certification program in mid-May. It really was not all that hard just extremely time consuming, which actually led two of my partners to leave the program early. Every week we would have one individual project and one team project due. These assignments ranged from four to 64 pages and really did not include charts or graphs and were typically just long word documents! I now have completed the required class hours needed to sit and take the first level exam for becoming a certified project manager. I actually purchased some practice exam software to begin to prepare and hope to be ready to take it in a few months. I feel the classwork more or less had us acting as if we were project managers and the exam looks like it is focused more on the basic fundamentals and definitions used in project management, so in a way I have a lot of preparing to do.

A week or so after finishing my final class project I came to Raleigh for the charity golf event that I am very lucky to have had put on for me the last few years. It is hard to believe that this was the fourth one held and as always it went really well. It always brings together such an amazing group of people with friends and family as well as supporters and members of the NC State basketball family. I am not sure how many more times this event will be held but I do expect there to be some changes sooner than later. We may consider moving the event to a different location with the golf course fees at Lonnie Poole just getting a bit too high. Also depending on my progress over the remainder of the year I would like to maybe change the focus of the event. I have shared this with some of you but I am in the progress of starting my own non-profit organization which will focus on raising money to help bring life improving therapies to people with spinal cord injuries. The more I have learned the more it has become apparent that while the science of function restoring therapies is challenging it is the money that remains the biggest obstacle.

There is a lot of paperwork involved in getting this setup and ready to be put into action. I have had to get incorporated, get an employee ID number, write bylaws, pay a few fees and finish up some lengthy applications. I hope to have this done in the next couple of weeks and I will share more information as soon as I wrap things up.

I feel like I never show enough appreciation for the continued support I have received over the last few years. I spend most of my time at the Hope To Walk golf event riding around talking to people and especially thanking them for coming out. I have a lot of thank you letters and emails to send out over the next few weeks and with the way some of the accounting is handled it is not always clear who has done what so I apologize if I miss anyone. I do plan to get back to updating this blog a little more frequently since I have a little bit more time now and I will have a lot of things to share over the next few weeks and months. With school and therapy being kind of status quo I haven’t had much time or info to share but I know that is changing.