Dyslexia

For those interested I thought I would extrapolate on my previous mention of my dyslexia diagnosis.
I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder when I was eight and in third grade. I've been off and on medication for it for most of my academic career, gone through programs to "make new pathways in the brain" and make it easier to concentrate. I made it through Jr. High and High School and eventually made it to the illustrious Wheaton College.
Academically I have struggled with at least one class every semester since I have entered college. Since my freshman year it was Music Theory, then Brit Lit, then World History, and most recently Spanish. My parents had been very critical of the grades I received in these classes, as most of my other grades have been in the A-B range. I struggled with the fact that I struggled with these classes. Many of these subjects are ones that I LOVE. Literature and history are two of my favorites because I have a deep love for stories. There are so many foreign languages I wish I could learn as well. Everything from Spanish to German to Gaelic to Dutch to Latin are on my list. But it was Spanish that brought me to my knees. My first semester at Wheaton I was in a Spanish class with a professor who continues to be one of my favorite at Wheaton. I was overwhelmed. We had daily vocabulary and usually several more assignments on top of that. The first couple days I managed to stay on top of my vocab. Bailar - to dance. Edicifio - building. I quickly fell behind. After talking through my schedule with a professor, I dropped Spanish. For a whole year I avoided it.
My sophomore year I once again began my instruction in Spanish. The same professor, same book, same level. I still struggled, but I had a better idea of what to expect. I fought my way through two semesters of Spanish with barely passing grades. I did not think I was at a place where I should be moving on to 201 (which is the final level for competency at Wheaton) but when I asked my professor if I should repeat a semester, she told me I should go on, so I signed up! Unfortunately, this was even worse! I would sit in class and stare at my teacher as she spoke rapid fire Spanish with a look of pure incomprehension. The pressures of the semester and just college in general were getting to me.
One day I mentioned to my teacher that I struggled with vocabulary, especially verbs, and she told me if I asked my counselor to give her a note, I could maybe get some help with the competency exam.

Thus began long process of my diagnosis.

I mentioned what my prof had said to my counselor at the beginning of one of my meetings. The next week he gave me the name of the women who basically is the Student Disability program and I sent an e-mail off to her hoping I could meet with her before I left campus for Thanksgiving Break. She said she could meet with me, but I had to fill out a survey of sorts before then. I picked the survey up later that day, filled it out, and then tried to remember to go and make another appointment with her. I did, and after talking with Jennie, she agreed it seemed like something was going on but she said she couldn't do anything without a psychologists report saying there was an issue. She gave me a page full of names and numbers and I left for break, confused, and hoping desperately this long process would be over soon.
The first woman on the list was actually an employee of the counseling center at Wheaton. She was my counselors overseer and boss. When my mom called Lisa, she was already familiar with my plight and had done this kind of disability testing before. Just discussing my "symptoms" she thought I might be dyslexic.
How can this be? you ask. The girl who constantly has her nose is a book? The one whose vocabulary matches a person out of grad school?
Well, thus followed one of the longest weekends of my life. I had five performances in three days. Then I had to work in two three hour appointments with Lisa for testing, because the following week there loomed COMPETENCY!!! I was put through a large variety of tests which I will not go into boring detail about, but a couple interesting details stood out to me. First, during the math portion I had a problem that involved an analog clock and it took me an obscene amount of time to complete. Lisa paused and asked me if I had had problems with learning analog clocks when I was younger, and when I said I had she said that that was often indicative of dyslexia. Secondly she said the way I help my pen was the same. She called it the thumb wrap. The result of my testing was as she predicted. I was mildly dyslexic.
Lisa had gone over my past ADD diagnosis and had found many indicators of dyslexia there. She also mentioned that it is not uncommon to find someone with a diagnosis of ADD to also have a diagnosis of dyslexia. Illinois is apparently one of the worst states for identifying dyslexia and Lisa had tested more than one college student whose condition had gone undiscovered until college. She said that since my fluid reasoning is so high I had developed coping strategies around the hindrances of my dyslexia, but these had stopped working for me once I got to college.
After this a report was sent to Jennie and Jennie sent an e-mail to my Spanish professor. Spanish competency was conquered and I am ready to face the rest of my college classes with new strategies to succeed!

And that is the very long story of my dyslexia diagnosis. If you've made it this far, I am impressed! Please bear with me as I continue to explore what I can do with this blog.