If grades were distributed for finding new friends and having a good time, freshman Ryan Ballou got an A in his first semester at Edinboro University.

Unfortunately, his performance in the classroom wasn't quite as good.

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The 19-year-old business major struggled like many others experiencing the new-found freedom of college. He is hardly the first college freshman to test the waters. Nor is he the first to discover that too much freedom and not enough time management can make for some bad decisions.

These were the least of his worries when he started school at Edinboro in the fall. Ryan was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a terminal genetic disorder characterized by a progressive loss of muscle function. Although he has the most severe of the nine forms of the disease, he's fared better than most because he has been on a treatment that has slowed the muscle deterioration.

So when it came time to select a college, he chose Edinboro, which is nationally renowned for its accessibility to disabled students. Now he has to work hard to be able to stay there.

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