Dyspraxia Diagnosis At 21: How It Shaped My Successes (And Failures)
Relief after a long awaited diagnosis and the determination to succeed …
“The dread that I was different started off in a Master’s level statistics class. I’d never been bad at maths, but I wasn’t good in comparison to my classmates. Surrounded by peers, who like me, hadn’t touched numbers since school, I presumed it wasn’t just me who was absolutely baffled by the weekly three hour lectures. It wasn’t until a seminar tutor suggested getting tested that I realised there could be an underlying issue.
“Have you ever struggled with simple things, like learning to drive or tying your shoelaces?” Looking down at my shoes, thinking of the multiple failed driving exams, the answer was obvious. Surely these things couldn’t correlate to why I was bad at maths. Couldn’t I just be crap with numbers? Question by question, the University’s learning difficulties advisor began scribbling more notes, trying to piece together the puzzle of my academic struggles.
Yes, I hated reading aloud, but surely that’s just a confidence issue, isn’t it? No, I didn’t struggle with my times tables – I can still spew out 12 times 12 now. As much as I love reading books, I can’t read an academic text in one sitting, and have to read it at least three times to get any sense of what’s going on. Fine, I can’t tell my left from right most of the time… and suddenly it starts to make some sense.
“Regardless of the hurdles I might face to achieve certain goals, it was important to realise that getting to this point meant I could still achieve whatever I desired if I was confident in my ability. ”
When asked to look back at school, I suppose some of the signs were more obvious than I thought. The fact that I could follow the exact steps to do a sum in maths, but still get the answer wrong. The numbers just jumbled up. It didn’t become a problem until university, where you had to get the answer itself correct to get the mark, rather that scrape a good grade by following the working.
“From what I’m seeing, it appears that you might have dyslexia and dyspraxia. How do you feel about that?” At first, there was an odd sense of relief – could this really explain why I still haven’t got my driver’s license? The terms dyspraxia and dyslexia seemed like far away, foreign terms.
Even with labels, there didn’t seem to be much of a solution. In fact, reflecting on the first few weeks after receiving the news, I felt like I dreaded my academic work than I ever had before. I couldn’t fathom going into lengthy lectures to listen to my peers brag about how much they were loving the content. The idea of randomly being asked to present to a group in a seminar terrified me, to the point where mid-lecture panic attacks became the norm. Now that I knew what was made me different from my classmates, I didn’t want to be embarrassed when they could clearly see I was struggling with the content.
With no current cure or solution to these learning difficulties, I suddenly became underconfident in my ability to get through a day of simple tasks. If I couldn’t do basic things like a weekly shop without bringing home coherent meals, how in the world was I going to finish my degree?
It wasn’t until an educational psychologist appointment (at £350 for a diagnosis, might I add – not a small number by any means for a University student) that I realised I needed to accept that these labels did not change the successes I had in the past, and would not impede my future triumphs. Regardless of the hurdles I might face to achieve certain goals, it was important to realise that getting to this point meant I could still achieve whatever I desired if I was confident in my ability.
Even though things like learning to drive and solving equations in statistics could take a bit longer than it would for other people, taking the time to learn things in a way that suited me reignited my passion for knowledge. No, I won’t be reading aloud to my course mates any time soon, but working on strategies to help me get through both the day to day has helped me appreciate just how much is possible if you are determined to succeed.”