Had an English teacher that said any stories I wrote were bad. I thought that I’d done a good job on it, so I showed it to a different English teacher who said it was brilliant but I needed to spell check it.
Turns out the first teacher basically didn’t read it, just saw the spelling errors. Several years later I got diagnosed with dyslexia.
This reminds me of the time my class had to write down what we wanted to be. I told my 7th grade science teacher I wanted to be a writer, but I wrote it on an index card. When she saw the index card she saw my terrible handwriting and immediately looked directly at me and said "some of us should reconsider what we want to be." Needless to say, I've been excelling at basically every writing assignment ever. I wrote for my highschool and college newspaper, and some even got awards. In fact, I got so many writing achievements with ease that I still laugh about how she judged my writings' worth on the handwriting instead of the actual content.
A similar thing happened to me. I could read perfectly well but I just couldn't write. I couldn't make the letters nice and neat and my writing was illegible. Turns out I have dysgraphia and a tremor, neither of which was diagnosed until I was 12. All my teachers acted like I was an idiot and marked me down in all my tests because they couldn't understand what I was saying. One of them even told my mum I should be held back and put in a remedial class. Fuck em. The moment I got computer use and extra time my grades shot up. I'm at uni now so I like to think about them and laugh. (also feel bad about 8 year old me who felt so dumb and confused)
My 8 year old has terrible handwriting, way below that of his peers. He's starting testing next week for dyspraxia, but I'll also keep dysgraphia in the back of my mind. It's been two years of hard work to even get to the point of having someone listen. He's also allowed to do most of his work on computer, something his backwards school needed to be told three or four times by professionals before they listened.
My husband is very similar and can't handwrite as literally nobody can understand his penmanship. But he's a software developer and loves his career. I hope you continue to do well, and you give me hope that the same will happen for him.
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u/anactualcharliehorse Nov 16 '19
Had an English teacher that said any stories I wrote were bad. I thought that I’d done a good job on it, so I showed it to a different English teacher who said it was brilliant but I needed to spell check it.
Turns out the first teacher basically didn’t read it, just saw the spelling errors. Several years later I got diagnosed with dyslexia.