by Lucy
A lot of people are surprised to find out that I'm dyslexic. I attend a top university studying Biochemistry and I have achieved good school grades.
I was diagnosed professionally at about age 6. My parents paid for me to have a private evaluation because my dad suffered with dyslexia and my reading at school was poor. I was so and infuriating to teach to read, and after the diagnosis my mum did the 'Toe-by-Toe' workbook system with me in order to improve my phonetics. My spelling was poor in primary school and I never learnt to spell by phonetics, but I worked hard to learn spellings by rote so got by a lot of the time. I have been awarded extra time in all my examinations since secondary school and now also at uni.
I think my manifestation if dyslexia is quite unique- or I just haven't spoken to anyone with the same problems. I have mostly overcome the obvious problem of spelling, and my handwriting is legible. However it's the smaller things that impact my day to day life.
So examples of things I have difficulty with;
-Writing down numbers or codes that someone is saying
-Remembering phone numbers or codes
-I don't know left and right and do the 'L' hands every time (apart from driving, but that is more obvious for me because I know I am driving on the left side of the road etc.)
-Poor sense of time
-Disorganised and messy room
-Can't remember acronyms, I always use the full names
-Can't remember or pronounce half the scientific and keywords I use on a daily basis. If I have to say them for a presentation, I take a few hours learning them by listening on online pronunciations. I quickly forget these though.
-When handwriting, I often start the spelling of a word in the middle of it, and then 'fill in' the rest of the letters around that.
However, I do feel like dyslexia has taught me a lot of important lessons and also that I am lucky to have a highly logical way of thinking about things and I'm creative at solving problems. I am also good at explaining concepts to others.