My Life with Dyslexia

In third grade, I found out that I had dyslexia. This particular year was such a struggle for me. I spent a lot of time studying and doing homework, but this would never show in the tests. This made school and learning very frustrating and discouraging. I grew to hate it. I can even remember overhearing my teach tell my mom, that I "just wasn't trying." Ouch! After most of the year being like this, my mom knew she had to do something. So I was tested that summer and that is when we found out I had dyslexia. Of course as a third grader, I had no idea what that was but I knew it didn't sound good and was very embarrassed. From there I got a tutor, went to "summer school", and started finding different ways to help me learn. While going through all of this I hated it. A lot! I couldn't see how helpful these things would end up being for my education. I learned that index cards are a great way for me to study. I learned that being organized was very important. I learned that reading slow wasn't the worse thing in the world, it was more about comprehension. And I learned dyslexia was nothing to be ashamed of, it just meant I had to put in a little bit more effort than everybody else. I still catch myself seeing numbers wrong or having to reread an entire passage in order to comprehend it, but I able to deal with my dyslexia to where I don't even remember I have it sometimes. I hope to be able to use my experience to help my own students in the future. It has also helped me to be more compassionate to people when they may not understand something as quickly as "everybody else" does.