In the movie Awakenings, Dr Sayre encountered numerous barriers when working at the hospital such as trouble with management, money, medicine, coming to a new place, and never working with patients. At the beginning of the movie, he is very shy and an inward person, but at towards the end of the movie he realizes that he has not been living his life, rather he has been letting other people live his life for him.
             When he first goes to the hospital to apply for the research position, he actually gets hired as a doctor. He had never worked with patients before in his life, except for a couple while he was completing his residency. He was overwhelmed his first couple of days, but when he got accustomed to the job he was walking around like he was the boss. I think that his breakthrough was when Lucy caught her glasses. That made him very interested. All he could think about was what was going on in their minds and what he could do to help them and maybe bring them out of the catatonic state they are in.
             Dr. Sayre had trouble with the administration personnel at the hospital. Since he was a new comer, they gave him a very rough time; they very seldom listened to him and made fun of his ideas. It was a big hassle for Sayre to get the administration to even consider using his methods. For example when Sayre wanted to put all of the patients on the medicine that Leonard was on, which was L Dopa, the administration basically said that they are easy to take care of the way they are, just like vegetables.
             Sayre had to have a presentation for all of the contributors to receive donations before he could administer the drug to the rest of the patients. The presentation was a big hit, almost all of the staff and the contributors donated money to the cause. Money was one of the big snags that he experienced because it is the basis of everything that happens in the hospital.
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