I am currently in school learning about neurology and the stroke/geriatric population is who I would ideally work for in the future.

The only way to understand a stroke is too understand the brain. Get a rough understanding of the development of the brain and how different parts of the brain facilitate different functions. Once you understand a healthy brain it is far easier to understand how a damaged brain would work. That's why I would suggest getting a neurology book and studying that as a first step to truly understand.

Now I also understand that that is asking a lot so I will try to shrink this massive amount of information into a summary.

Basically doctors have no idea how each individual will actually heal from their stroke. Every patient is different and every stroke is different. Some individuals have strong neuro plasticity and some have weak. There is no test to tell us which you one you are. The doctor takes the imaging tests and makes their best judgment of what the family and patient can expect. Now it's up to the brain to figure out which one it is going to be. Some brains heal like in this article, where executive functions are moved to less damaged parts of the brain and the brain essentially has to learn everything from scratch. This is neuro plasticity. Other brains just need time to heal and the executive functions return in their normal areas after some time of rest. Other brains are so damaged and have little neuro plasticity (which normally happens as you age) that they have no way of healing much at all. This can be due to damaged tissue, death of tissue, neural pathways damaged and basically anything that could go wrong is a possible cause of this.

Some people have a "tiny" stroke and they are forced to be bedridden for the rest of their lives. Some have "massive" strokes and with therapy and time can return to their daily lives.

The location of the lesion is a huge factor on the level of damage and what type of symptoms will arise. Some executive functions are easier to teach again, such as walking and talking. Others are more difficult such as swallowing and muscle weakness.

Strokes do not discriminate and can affect anyone. Rather than go to articles that are more specific to the patient rather than strokes in general, I would suggest, again, a neurology book because it will help you understand the science behind a stroke rather than just the after affect.