January – Lost in Dyslexia
Christmas has come and gone and a new year looms which Im sure is just waiting to cause me a hole world of pain with regards to reading, writing, spelling oh and the many regular dyslexic misshaps I usualy get my self into! Most of which are at work. Infact it is a work tradition that if any one mucks up or makes a mistake they have to buy cakes! AND depending on how much you muck up depends on what cakes you have to buy ie muck up bad and you have to buy cream cake!! Well my team should be fat, realy fat because I seem to be on the cake fine board all the time! Infact one time I owed soooo many cakes I just decided that it would be cheaper and easyer to get up at 5am and cook them all bacon roles!!!!!
Noooo Nooo My way, No your way!!!!!
Learning to drive was a big thing for me when I was younger. At my old school people were all geting there first cars! The nover was a popular one which personaly I hated. However my first car was the old style tank nisan micra with 4 gears and a choke!!! But before I could get into the beast I had to pass my test. Quickly my instructor realised that following a few incidents where he had told me to turn right and I had actualy turned left there may be something wrong. One time he said turn right the the next T junction which naturaly I turned left straight into a dead end road and he just looked at me and said “we need to come up with a way or sorting this”. So we developed the “My way Your way” aproach. This was much better but im sure it was confusing for him. “so sam, I want you to take the second my way at the end of the road and then bear your way heading into town! Sounds silly but it worked although the driving test examiner did not acsept that aproach and I faied due to going the wrong way and ending up in a dead end again.
Test Day – take 2!!!!!!!
So I really wanted to talk about my experience with regards to being tested for dyslexia. I wasnt formaly diagnosed until I was at universtity in Canterbury. Prior to this I had a number of other test such as the purple glasses and the eye patch but nothing formal. I then was given the opertunity to do a formal pycological assesment at university and my employer recently also sent me for another one so I am a bit of an expert. Its over £500 a pop each time! Being dyslexic is expencive!!!
So the assesment is about three hours long and im not going to lie, it was a nightmear, stressfull and made me question my own interlectial ability on compleation. There is a number of elements of the assesment including reding tests, writing tests, visual shape chalenges and maths questions. Well it is safe to say that I sucked at all of them!! To the point that I felt like walking out of the test because I couldn’t belive that I was that bad. Haha and it cost £500 for the privlage! I had worked so hard over the years to try and better myself and break through this barrier which has been labled as dyslexia that I thought on my second test I would be able to do better.
Well the following three hours of the test which included creating different shapes with ties, word test where they say a word and you have to describe it with other word (which is ctuly quite hard), reading tests including block and single word, maths tests, number memorie tests i.e they say; 6 9 10 1 22 5 and you have to remember them and put them in the right order or revers, I thought that I may have done a little better. But to my dismay I had not changed at all infact boardering a worse result than my last test at uni.
My friends will all vouch that when it comes to me and dyslexia I am always positive and up beat but for a moment following the result of my assesment I felt angry with my self, disapointed and could not understand why the test had beaten me. Since my last test I had gained a degree and have done over 8 years in a promising career which I have progresed in yet “the test” still beat me.
So the results of my test are based on a percentage of where you lie with in the genral population ie 50 % being the avrage and 10% percent being nearer the bottem of the scale and bellow avrage.
My scores;
Working memorie – bottem 9%
Processing speed – bottem 10%
Nurological reasoning – bottom 4%
Reading speed – bottem 7%
However – the test is designed to bring out all the traits of dyslexia and in the end I know that it was only to help me. I am still 100% focused, motivated, ambisous and dedicated to not leting dyslexia hold me back. Im not ashamed to be dyslexic, infact I would not want to live life with out it. It is who I am and I would not change that no matter how much it can try to knock you down.
Dyslexia in the new!
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/29/largest-uk-sperm-bank-turns-away-dyslexic-donors
So last month I saw this article in the paper regarding the largest sperm bank in the UK banning dyslexic people from donning. At first I thought it might be because they throught us dyslexic people may not be able to fill out the form properly or because they thought we might not find there clinic because we cant read maps! No It simply is because they do want dyslexic people donning or the gean being past on. If I was in the situation of needing help having children then I would far rather a little abert eignstine, a leader like churchhill, and business focused personality like branson, a talented actress like jennifer anderstan or a talented world famous writer like agatha cristy! It’s a shame that there are many organisations out there that don’t recognise dyslexia as being a positive.
This is what Im tring to achive and promote. I don’t fully understand dyslexia and I defantly am lost within it but what I do know is it is a driving force to achive which people and orgnisations should harvest and use.
Thank you for reading
Sam