CARBONDALE - The Chandrashekar household will be a busy household this weekend as friends and family from all over the country and even Canada and India arrive to celebrate Rupa Chandrashekar's graduation from Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

"This is a big deal," said the 31-year-old who will receive her doctorate in rehabilitation.

Her parents, Varadraj and Padmalatha Chandrashekar, want to go all-out for this moment for their daughter, they said, because she has accomplished and overcome so much to get to this point.

When they think about the fact that their daughter was born with a congenital birth defect, spina bifida, and where

she is today, both get teary-eyed.

When Rupa was born, they were living in New Brunswick, N.J., where Varadraj was finishing his doctorate in physiology. Having a daughter with spina bifida was something they weren't expecting. The family moved to Carbondale when Rupa was 7 years old.

"It was really shocking to us. We said, 'we'll see what we can do,'" he said. "We didn't treat her like she was disabled. We said anything you want to do is fine."

What they wanted for their daughter, they said, was an education.

"We left it up to her," Padmalatha said. "She achieved it and that's a good thing."

The family spent Friday getting ready for the 50 people they expect to arrive in their home. They chopped up vegetables while the scents of curry floating through the kitchen held the promise of some big meals.

Rupa's dissertation focused on people with disabilities, but she said it wasn't completely due to her own disability.

"That has shaped me to realize different disabilities are different," she said, adding that she was born with her disability. "I didn't know any different. I've just lived my life with what I have."

She earned her bachelor's degree in English and psychology and decided she liked psychology enough to earn her master's degree in counseling education. But while working on her master's degree she discovered how people who suffer from traumatic brain injuries cope with their pain and try to regain part of their lives.

She realized then that those studies would have more to do with rehabilitation than educational counseling.

She said working on her doctoral degree has been as frustrating as anything she's ever had to deal with in her life.

She came up with her topic and wrote the first part of her dissertation: "Awareness of Deficits and Perceptions of Quality of Life of Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury" but she found it difficult to prove her theories.

She had trouble finding people to participate in her study, eventually having to travel throughout the region going to clinics and spending time with people with brain injuries. She finally finished her dissertation in December and finished her doctorate work in April.

"I had a lot of barriers and a lot of roadblocks during my dissertation," she said. "I'm glad to have it over with."

Rupa's not quite sure where she will go or what she wants to do now that she's done with school, but eventually she wants to be a professor - like her dad.

For now, though, she's just happy to have her family and friends with her to celebrate.

kristen.cates@thesouthern.com

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