So maybe from reading my posts up until now you may have figured out my grammar is not the greatest or sometimes my wording just seems off. It’s not from being lazy that’s for sure, but I actually have dyslexia. Something I’ve had all of my life but not diagnosed with until the 5th grade. I was really lucky my mom did her research and figured out I was dyslexic way before any of my teachers would believe her. I had a reading teacher in elementary school who just kept telling my mom that i was just lazy when it came to reading and my homework. Great thing for a teacher to say about a kid right?
Once my mom finally was able to have someone test me and paperwork provided I was dyslexic i was sent off to a private school from sixth to eight grade where i was able to learn how to read and write in a way that would work for my brain. People hear you have dyslexic and the first thing they do is ask you to read this word or that word, It doesn’t work like that at least not for me, once my brain knows a word it’s easy for me to recognize it. When i come across a new word or one i may not see on a regular that’s when figuring out what it is comes into play. The way i was taught to figure out a word is to break it down into sections and sound it out sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s extremely hard. If i am stressed out or do not feel well it can become so much harder for my brain to unscramble a word.
Being an adult with dyslexia can be extremely frustrating and you can feel embarrassed at times as well from the time I entered college one common phrase everyone seems to love to tell me is, “well just write everything out and then put it aside and look at it again then you will find all of your mistakes”. Everyone let me say this once and maybe it will stick with some of you, do you realize how demining it sounds to someone who actually tries extremely hard on an everyday basis to just read and write like a regular person. My brain doesn’t work that way, it’s like telling someone who is color blind just close your eyes for a minute and then open them. I’m sure you will see the color red then. My brain does not work the same way an average person’s brain works; it doesn’t matter how much time passes. Sometimes I am not going to see whatever word or sentence I may have mixed up. It’s reading correctly in my brain so on paper it looks correct.
Unfortunately sometimes when people hear you have a learning disability sometimes their first thought is you are dumb or cant possible amount to very much. When i first went back to my town’s high school my mom was asked if they wanted her to put me in a trade school program, or cosmetology, or just all special education classes. Now there is nothing wrong with going into cosmetology or getting into a trade school program however neither of those was something I wanted to do. My goal was to go to college, so getting placed into easier classes was not going to help me reach my goal. I pushed myself every step throughout my education because I wanted to prove something to every person who did and still doubts me.
Present day I now work for a corporate company, I have my MBA in project management and I went straight to a four year college. I have the student loans to prove it unfortunately. Dyslexia isn’t something that ever goes away or that there is a fix to. You just learn how to deal with it and do not let it be a crutch or at least that’s how I handle it.
