The Story of Arturo Vazquez

Who do I find inspiring? People that take control of their life, people that do not blame others for their shortcomings and/or misfortune, with a positive attitude who do not give up when facing a problem and find the strength to overcome it, no matter what, that’s who I find inspiring.

I am a foreign student and coming to Manchester to follow my academic career, working along with people from so many different cultures and backgrounds has been a great and unforgettable experience.

At the beginning of this year, I went through surgery due to injury. At first, I felt frustrated as I was looking for a whole year of physical therapy in order to get back to train at full strength. However, when facing these types of problems it’s good to keep a positive attitude, be humble, remember what you are capable of and picture yourself getting back on your feet.

The surgical procedure was performed flawlessly and for the first couple of weeks it is recommended to keep at rest, but even with the limitations that are implied when healing from surgery, you have to remain active and never let yourself go as there’s always something that can be done about it, for example, the most obvious thing to do first was to adjust my diet since I was sleeping and resting throughout most of the day. A few weeks later, I was able to start doing basic physiotherapy but still couldn’t do any upper body exercises as my arm was healing, so I focused on my lower body instead.
The recovery process has been exceptional, and now I am in a situation that I wasn’t expecting to be until the end of the year. And now that I have reached this milestone, it’s time to set a new goal and “Keep raising the bar!” Being in a different country and dealing with a system which I wasn’t familiar with, was a peculiar situation, which in the end, only enriched my experience of living in the U.K.