Can you imagine being homeschooled for the latter part of middle school to suddenly attending boarding school? It’s a daunting transition that Julie Flygare ’01 had to make upon her arrival through the gates of Middlesex. She notes that living in a dorm at the age of 13 was both exciting and challenging. The excitement was obvious, for it’s a every girl’s dream to have a permanent sleepover with her friends every night, but with that, came the difficulty of being around people 24/7 and learning when to shut the door and concentrate, instead of socializing with friends in the common room: “that experience taught me time management and self-discipline, skills that have served me well, far beyond MX.”
Julie’s unique story is not simply that she was a homeschooled girl from New Hampshire turned boarding school graduate. Indeed, in 2007, after graduating from Brown University in 2005 and while attending Boston College Law School, Julie was diagnosed with narcolepsy with cataplexy. The disease is characterized by intense daytime drowsiness and sudden loss of muscle tone, along with many other intense symptoms. Her personal experience with the disease fueled her passion towards health law and a focus on rare disease drug development. She moved to Washington DC and began writing a memoir, titled “Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir of Narcolepsy,” which was published in 2012 (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0988314908). She dedicated the rest of her time towards advocating for narcolepsy on Capitol Hill: “I wanted to open people’s hearts and minds to the real narcolepsy, a fascinating, but serious neurological disease, unlike the jokes in movies.” In 2014, on a mission to make sleep cool, Julie founded a non-profit called Project Sleep (http://project-sleep.com/). From there, things took off, with speeches all over the country about her journey with narcolepsy—from collapsing on the ground paralyzed, to running marathons.
Take a glance at Julie’s success and you’ll see bits of Middlesex sprinkled throughout. While at MX, former faculty member and English teacher Diane Proctor’s creative writing class stressed one thing: grab the reader with your first line. Thus, Julie opens her book with the line “It began with laughter.” Julie hoped it would grab readers to learn more about her first experience with the symptoms of narcolepsy, which occurred when she began laughing one day and her body collapsed to the ground paralyzed. She later learned this was cataplexy.
It wasn’t just Mrs. Proctor that influenced her though. In true Middlesex form, Julie had various other mentors, whose lessons she carries with her today. For example, English teacher John Hirsch’s belief in Julie and her abilities as a squash player (“he once told me he’d awoken in the middle of the night to realize what was wrong with my backhand”) translated into Julie believing in her fierce determination, work ethic, and patience. Indeed, even though players on paper should have beat her, Julie won out, eventually going on to play varsity squash at Brown. Lastly she notes, former faculty member and Art History teacher, Malcolm Russell taught her how to push beyond her comfort zone, a skill that has come in handy throughout her career and especially during her experience running marathons, which she completed while suffering from narcolepsy.
The Middlesex network’s reach once again surprised Julie in 2010 when the Alumni Association did a blurb about her running the Boston Marathon with narcolepsy. Months later, an alum reached out to see if Julie’s story could be featured in her magazine. After the article was published, Julie learned that a women in Florida had read her story and immediately knew, after years of misdiagnoses, she was suffering from narcolepsy. That article saved at least one person’s life, to which Julie says, “what more could I ask for?”
However, Julie’s most meaningful project arose three years ago when she co-founded The Jack & Julie Scholarship, which is the first ever scholarship for students with narcolepsy. Julie notes that adjusting to narcolepsy in law school was hard enough, and she “can’t imagine taking on these challenges in high school—managing terrifying symptoms, serious medications, and social stigmas.” For Julie, it’s a feeling of immense gratitude that she gets to award scholarships to young adults who overcome adversity in their efforts to continue their education.
Julie’s advice to students, “don’t sleepwalk through life, get more sleep!” With the mounting pressures on students to succeed, she notes that burning the candle at both ends will inhibit success. Instead, prioritize what makes you feel fulfilled: “Living with narcolepsy, I sleep 8-10 hours a night, and take two naps a day. Despite all this sleep, I’ve run two marathons, published a book, and started my dream non-profit. For me, the winning combination has been prioritizing what makes me feel most alive and falling asleep satisfied.”