Dyslexia and Me - Today

04 Aug 2018 at 19:51 // under Personal Dyslexia

These posts cover how dyslexia has, and continues to, influence my life.

Previously:

• Dyslexia and Me - Past
• Dyslexia and Me - Cycling Metaphor

My performance at school started to improve once I started getting the targeted support. It also helped that in secondary school, classes were more interested in my knowledge of a particular subject rather than how well and quickly I could write.

I started to develop tricks that would help me through education. I didn't bother going for volume of work and repeating similar exercises for revision. Instead I focused on finding the hardest problems. When I picked courses and subjects to study, I did consider how much essay writing was involved. I also became good at writing minimalist answers. How many points could I make per sentence. I would happily do any work on a computer if that was an option.

These days I think I have gotten to a stage where I have mostly overcome the dyslexia.

It is no longer a concern for my day to day life. I make use of technology and have a general rule for taking notes:

Assume anything I write on paper will self destruct after 24 hours.

This is because my handwriting is so bad that I cannot rely on being able to read it later. I generally prefer to have everything typed up. Apart from having fonts that I can read, the have another couple of advantages:

• They have spell checkers. Yes most spell checkers have flaws but they are still a significant help in the right direction.
• They can be edited. I often want to go back and rearrange my thoughts or correct an earlier mistake.
• They can be searched. This would be useful for anyone. It is very satisfying to be able to type a search term into my notes and pull up details of conversations I had years ago.

I am really glad to be living in the age of computers. It is a bit of a pain that I now work in an environment that is highly restrictive on the use of technology.

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