Personal Story from Jo
I had been reading the dyslexia newsletter stories and as always I was comforted by the fact that I'm not alone. It's nice to know that others realize that the road maps in our brains aren't all the same. It's OK to learn in a different way--it's OK not to be just like everybody else--even if sometimes I wish I were.

I was the older sister whose younger sister could tie her shoes and tell time before I could. To this day, I still have to think which is my right or my left. What was wrong with me? My Mom had me tested, they said I had a reasonably high IQ--why was I in the lowest reading group?

Through my mother's determination that her daughter wouldn't be a poor student, I managed to do OK. She taught me my vowels and consonants and to read phonetically. And, she made me read the entire Weekly Reader aloud from first to the last word each week. I learned to read and I've been reading ever since! But, you know what? It's still hard sometimes.

To illustrate "it" runs in families, 30 years later when my daughter was in grade school, history was to repeat itself. Just like me, April didn't just learn to read in school. And, like me, she didn't seem to know her right from her left. She did learn to read though; she learned at home after dinner from me. Also, like me, her younger sibling seemed to just look over her shoulder and learn her math homework when she didn't seem to be able to remember it. But she too worked hard and I always told her she was beautiful and smart and that good study habits would pay off. They did. Today, she is working on her RN and doing well

I am working on my Bachelor's in Business and though I occasionally have my own "Waterloos" I have maintained above a 3.7 GPA most of the time. Just when I think, "O Boy, I've got this thing licked!", it seems to resurface and remind me that the struggle is never really over. Managerial Accounting took me quite by surprise. I'd done just fine in Financial and Principles so why couldn't I get this stuff--it's not that hard. When the professor lectures or I read the text, the words just seemed to swim around on the page and they didn't make any sense at all. I'd fall asleep, lose my concentration, and then have to reread and reread and still forget what I'd read. But, finally, I determined that if I organize the information in spread sheet form so that I can see it, look at it, and visualize it in some sort of order, then I can learn, understand, and remember it. Hey, now I'm on my way to success again!

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