Struggling through Challenges: Dyslexia

 Today's post will be centered on the challenges that you can face with having dyslexia.  I have dyslexia and it greatly impacts my day to day life.  There are some methods that I use to help me get around such challenges.  Struggling with severe dyslexia has made it so that I can't functionally read anything of a true value.   This has made it very hard from me in many aspects of life.  The first time this really impacted my performance, was during high school.  Something that they did to help me get through high school was that they would read the test questions to me and allowed me to answer verbally.  This really helped, especially when it came to subjects such as history, government, or English. The reason this was so successful was because of my unusually good memory and recall abilities.  However, when it came to subjects such as math and science, my dyslexia had a huge negative impact in impairing my ability to progress in those respective disciplines.  As a result, I couldn't receive my high school diploma.  

This really impacted my ability to seek higher education in a traditional sense.  My severe dyslexia has, in essence, prevented me from understanding the basics of mathematics and science, despite my great proclivity for memorization.  The fact of the matter is that this is the case for a lot of people who suffer from extreme dyslexia, and are unable  to manage those symptoms in a way that is meaningful.  I will never be able to successfully achieve a higher education, but I'm not revealing this in an attempt to garner sympathy or pity, I am simply stating this as a matter of fact. 

For the longest time my inability to learn effectively was greatly impacted by the fact that I have only been diagnosed recently, and have only been receiving.  This new information would have been great to know earlier, because it likely would have changed how I was taught, and who knows? maybe I would have been able to get my diploma.

My hopes are to encourage any parents who have children who are struggling in their schooling, to get them checked clinically to see if the child is suffering from a learning disability - so that perhaps they might have more recourses available to them, giving them more assistance than I might have had in my high school days.  I would encourage parents to see their children with learning disabilities as people who are advantaged, rather than disadvantaged because there are still many avenues in which their children may become successful.

In the modern day there are, thankfully, a whole lot more options technologically and service wise that allow people with similar challenges, including several state and federally funded educational programs.  I encourage all people to do their best to seek understanding of dyslexia and other learning disabilities.  Lastly, I would like to invite everybody to reach anyways, despite whatever difficulty they might be facing.