The Midterms of February

So it has been awhile, mostly because I have been busy with midterm and projects. Also because life is cray cray.

I'm sorry everyone. I'm sorry that my inner 13 year old cali girl side of me just came out... I'm just going to stop here.

So my funny dyslexic moment of the month has to go to when I was at our career fair. So I was trying to be responsible and cool by looking at all the companies coming to BYU that were looking for mechanical engineers. I saw who was coming and would go to their website to see what they do. I did it for all the companies except one, NASA. Being from Houston, TX and having gone to the NASA center in Houston several times, movies and my grandpa working for them, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding on what they did. So I went to NASA's recruiting table. I was talking to their recruiter for a little bit and I told him that my grandpa used to work for them and built rocket ships in the 80s. The man looked at me and said. "We aren't NASA, We're NSA." We had a good laugh. I definitely left my best impression. The sad thing though, was that after talking to him for about 10 minutes, I felt that I left a better impression with him than the other recruiters.

BYU has a great TA program, if you can call it that. For most of my classes TA's hold weekly or at least pre-test reviews for my classes.  I have done a pretty good job of attending these reviews. One thing I learned about preparing for tests in Feburary was when I was gettting ready for my statics test. I was sitting in a review and I realized I wasn't getting anything out of it. Normally in this situation I do two things: 1) sit through the rest of it and play on my phone or 2) leave and go do something else. But what I did this time was something different. I left, found a table, and did practice problems. I realized I had learned the material but I needed to become more comfortable with what I learned. By assessing my own needs, I was able to do what was best for me in preparing for my test. Of course, I haven't abandond these reviews. Now before I go, I do an honest assestment of what I need to do to prepare. As long as my assestments don't lead me to do nothing, I have seen an improvement in my test scores. 

I hope that can help someone and get there mind going..  

Being an Advocate p1

Sorry for making you wait for my blog update, I've been busy... I am happy to announce that I am now engaged to my wonderful girlfriend, Ashtyn! I am pretty excited. I asked her on June 21. I am not going to get into the details about how I proposed, but I am sure you will find it somewhere on pinterest. I will just say... I hit out of the park! :)

Writing this post wasn't the only thing that fell off my priority list. The week before last, I didn't really do any homework during the weekday, I was so focused on getting the ring and the proposal right.  The weekend of the 25th I did about 18 hours of homework. I was literally buried under my books.  Luckily, I was able to turn everything in on time. Then last week I followed the schedule I made pretty closely and I finished everything by Friday morning. As a result, this past weekend I was able to relax. I'm feeling pretty good! (If I haven't convinced you yet about making and following a schedule, this is my best example. I don't know what more I can do!)

I have learned there is a big difference between being a dyslexic student in college vs. a dyslexic student in high school.  My dyslexia hasn’t changed, but  rather the way I receive services.  In high school,  I had teachers (most of the time) and counselors who made sure I received the help I needed.  I had meeting scheduled twice a year to go over my academic plan to make sure the accommodations I was receiving were appropriate and that I was doing well. Most importantly, I had a super mom who courageously fought for me in meetings to insure that I had the help I needed. Now that I am in college, it is not that the support has just disappeared, but the responsibility has fallen on my shoulders. No counselor or teacher is going to call and say, “hey Wil, it is time for your semi-annual meeting,” or “Wil, I really think you would benefit from this accommodation being added.” I have to make sure I am receiving the accommodations that I need. I needed to represent myself. I have had to become my own advocate.

I have noticed there are two ways someone with a learning disability needs to advocate for themselves:

1) Make sure you are receiving the accommodations you need.  This can be done by looking at past accommodations from high school and deciding which ones you still need.

2) Make sure you are getting the most of your learning in college. This means making sure you are taking the steps to graduate in the most effective way possible by participating in the academic process (i.e. clubs, organizations, getting involved in research), and making sure you are getting more than just grades from school.

I want to touch on being an advocate in this post and getting the most out of the academic process in another post..

What is an advocate? An advocate is like a lawyer or a representative. In Christianity, Jesus Christ is often called the "advocate of our souls." Accourding to the dictionary.com app on my phone, an advocate is a person who pleads for or in behalf of another. As a verb, to advocate is to speak or write in favor of; support or urge by argument; recommend publicly.”  When I say you need to advocate for yourself, what I am actually saying is you need to stand up on your desk in the middle class and let everyone know what you need and plead your case to your teacher. Right? NO! Wrong! It's a bit more subtle than that. In fact, I meet with my professors privately and let them know of my accommodations. I then hand them a letter from the Student Accessibilities Center (SAC) which lists all my accommodations and notes my dyslexia.  I also like to let my professors know that I like to participate in class and to feel free to pick on me like they would in any other student. Even though the SAC sends a letter to all of your professors, I have found without communication from me personally they are less likely to ever read the letter that has been sent, or to put a name with a face. This way if you make contact with your professor, hand him/her a copy of your accommodations letter, you know without a doubt who you are and what you need.

I feel from personal experience, to be your own advocate, you need three things;  to know your resources, be educated/informed about your learning disability, and stand up for things you know.

Knowing your Resources

Many times when the responsibility shifts to you (and this can be with any new responsibilities) you can feel alone and not know what to do.  You are still not alone!  Many universities have centers with counselors to help you. At BYU, it's call the Student Accessibilities Center (SAC). Other important help, are those who helped you in high school. Your parents, old teachers and counselors are more than willing to help you if you ask. They are a huge resource for old records, testing, and general information.

Be Educated/Informed

You need to know some basic facts about dyslexia or learning disabilities.  Most important there is NO  research that shows that learning disabilities disappear as you grow older.  Do not believe anyone that tells you that you have outgrown your dyslexia.  If someone says that to you, they are ignorant and they do not understand our LD. We know how to compensate really well, because we have to, but we will always have it.  Also, as we grow older the way dyslexia will affect us will change.  Everything else will just really just build on those two things.

Sources you can go to learn more are www.interdys.org, to the Yale Center for Dsylexia and Creativitydyslexia.yale.edu , both websites have tons of information availble. Here are some of my favorites:

http://www.interdys.org/ewebeditpro5/upload/DyslexiaBasicsREVMay2012.pdf

http://www.interdys.org/ewebeditpro5/upload/GiftedAndDyslexicFebruary2013(1).pdf

http://dyslexia.yale.edu/

http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Myths.html

http://dyslexia.yale.edu/dyslexiastraighttalk.html

Also, look up Sally Shaywitz. She is Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale University School of Medicine and co-director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. She has written plenty of articles and books. If I actually used my twitter account, I'd look to see if she had a twitter account and follow her. On a serious note, she probably knows more about learning disabilities than anyone else.

Stand Up for Yourself

Standing up for yourself is the most important. It's sad, but most educators still don't fully understand what learning disabilities are and how they change as people get older. Many still believe that you can develop enough skills to the point where you don't need accommodations. They think once your grade are good you don’t need the help, not connecting the fact that your grades are good because of the accommodations.   Obviously you’re smart and have the academic ability to be where you are. Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t belong. If you feel as if you are not getting something from a professor you are entitled to, talk to the professor.  If that doesn’t work, go to the SAC and ask for help. Remember, to always to pleasant and courteous. The saying, “you catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar” is true in this situation also.

You probably you have received some individual teaching to help you with your learning disability. If you are like me, you have been tested for a learning disability every three years just incase "something changed." But learning disabilities do not go away, and will need to be accommodated for an entire life.

If you can do these three things you can become a successful advocate. Next time I will give you my little anecdote about how I learned these things. If you have any question or more insight you can leave a comment or email me at wgroesbeck@gmail.com.

Academic Bingeing

Like I said in the last post, I'm a resident assistant (RA). What I do is get paid to live in the dorms and make sure the dorms don't burn down and let people into their rooms if they get locked out. Most of the time it is pretty easy. One of the exceptions is making signs, especially if they are door tags with residents names one them. As RAs we are supposed to have "themes". A theme can be anything from a movie to some message or goal you'd like to impose on the residents. Last semester I choose the later. Since BYU's mascot is a cougar, I thought the theme "conquering your inner cougar" would be a cool theme. The point was to focus on how to overcome your weaknesses or challenges (cougar) this semester to be better people.

So I don't know how to rotate the picture.
I tried in the photo editor on my computer.. 

When I made my signs, I didn't want to make any spelling mistakes so I asked my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends how it looked and if everything was spelt right. They all said it looked fine. So I printed them and put them on the doors. That was in August. So October comes around and one of my residents asked me, "Whats a courger?" On all 30ish door tags they all said "Conquer your inner courger". 

I can only think of two explanations why this happened, besides the fact I just can't spell. 

1) my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends all collaborated and wanted to tease me, so didn't say anything.

2) my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends didn't really look at it when I asked them.

Knowing my mom it was probably the first one.

So now fast forward to this week. New semester. I was asked to make new door tags. I was determined to not repeat the same mistake. Not trusting my mom, my boss, other RAs and friends I went to get them printed off. The layout was correct. I didn't use any word more than a syllable and had more than five letters. So when I got them, my girlfriend was looking through them and asked a terrible question, "Did you mean to miss spell Brian? It says Brain." Luckily, I gave a lot of the returning residents nicknames or made fun of their names on their tags, so I'm going to try to make them believe that was the plan all along.. So we will see what happens!

Well, the first week of school happened. It was great. I really like all my classes. The first day of classes were a little rough trying to find where my classes were. At BYU, all the buildings have acronyms. Most of my classes are the in the Crabtree Building (CTB) and the Clyde Building (CB), to make it better they are right next to each other! I wrote down where my classes were by their acronyms. I only mixed them up only a few times.. haha I felt like a freshmen all over again.

What really helped me last semester was to make a schedule to make sure I get everything done. For me I have four main things I need to get done everyday/week: set commitments, personal time, social time and work/school. For me, when I do not have a plan, I tend to binge in one of those areas. For example, if I have been spending too much time with my friends/girlfriend (social life) (and so take out) I have to pull an all nighter to catch up on homework. I think college students can relate to that! More personally to me, I have subject days. Last semester for my economics class the homework was due on Thursdays, so I would spend all of Wednesday doing the homework. When I made my schedule for this semester, I wanted to avoid dedicating one day to a subject and balance it out throughout the week.

So I am going to walk through how I made my schedule for this semester.

First, I like to write down my set commitments (that I have.take out) because it doesn't matter what I do, the time isn't going to change. For me these things are classes, work and church meetings. Normally these things are week to week and consistent.

Next I like to take care of my personal stuff. Examples may include eating, sleeping, personal time and exercise. I wrote these in purple. For me it's important to plan to do these things, then spend as much time possible studying. It doesn't matter how good my study plan is if I don't eat, sleep or have fun, I will go crazy and not do my best. Even though I have these written in pen, they aren't set in stone. So if I don't go to bed at 10:30, I don't get mad at myself. It's just a set time plan for myself. You can say it's like a mini goal. Quick side story, when I was putting my time to sleep. I was just drawing a line across the page for my personal "bed time", I got half way across Friday and thought who am I kidding and stopped. Therefore there is a purple line half way across the Friday column. 

(The take out) Next I planned for homework. BYU says that to get an A you need to study three times  as many credit hours as your class is. I don't know if that is true, maybe for upper level classes, but for me, and judging off the syllabi my teachers have given me, I have about an hour of homework and another hour of readings for every hour of class. If you think like me, you'll understand this better: hours spent outside of class ≥ 2 x hours spent in class. So what I do to get a realistic idea of how much HW I will have, I go through my syllabi and put all my HW in the reminders in my phone and to go off the day it's due or the day before. It's pretty helpful to see how much is due. I also put reminders for tests, papers and projects based on the syllabus of the class. It gives me an idea in advance how much time I should put into a class. (Currently I only have January in my phone because it can be a little time consuming.)

Then with the hw load in mind, I plan out when would be the best and most realistic time I should work on something. I do this in pencil because things change. Several TA's in my class are going to put review session times up so I may need to adjust my schedule. But I don't have every single hour filled up, that time is free time or wiggle time to help me get everything done. Also, I would recommend putting in study breaks. For me, every hour I need to stand up and move. I have found calling people for ten minutes to catch up and walking are much better study breaks than checking facebook, emails or espn. 

Even though I've scheduled out my week, it is mostly just an outline or a guide. I don't walk around with this piece of paper. It just helps me see how much time I have, try to have a balanced life and still reach my goals. Doing this, I realize how much time I really have.

Now the most important thing about planning, do what works best for you. This schedule is a little over the top and is mostly to make my mom proud. If you have a hard time sticking to a schedule, try planning out only three hours. Try making lists. I am sure you're smart enough to think of something!

Well I hope this is helpful! Take care!

Intro to the Dyslexic Scholar

Hello my name is Wil. Yep, that's right. Wil with only one 'L'. The story behind that is pretty simple and funny. When I was 7 or 8, my cousin Jef was in high school and decided to drop one of his F's. So out of pure admiration, and with the joy that comes to a child who is annoying his mother, I copied my cousin and decided to drop an 'L' in my name. 

I really feel like that story sums me up pretty well. Those who know me tend to agree. If I had to pick a disney character to help you understand who I am, I would say I'm Goofy. I am a very happy, carefree, and clumsy dude. (Typing that sentence made me feel like I was making an online dating profile. I was going to say "guy", but that didn't sound manly enough.) I have this joke that I have “chronic happiness”. I believe it's a very serious issue. I remember last semester I was complaining to my girlfriend about all the things I needed to do and get done, along with all the current trials or problems I was having. She looked at me said, "I don't know how you could tell me all that and still be smiling." Like I said earlier, chronic happiness is a serious issue. I can't even be taken seriously when I complain! 

I really believe I am the luckiest person in the world because I was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to the two greatest parents ever. I could not have chosen two greater people to support and help me as I grew up. I am eternally grateful for the sacrifices and prayers that they have given for me. I don't know what I would do if I didn’t have them. My life would have been close to impossible without them. 

We moved to Houston, Texas when I was 7 years-old. I had several interests growing up because of my indecisiveness. Basically, I had a new hobby every six months. Even though I enjoyed everything I participated in, I was always attracted to the next shiny new thing and would do that instead. Just in high school, I tried out football, theatre, photojournalism, and cheerleading. The two main things that stuck with me growing up were running and Boy Scouts. I was able to receive my Eagle Scout award when I was 14 but stayed involved in scouting and did adventure scouts until I graduated from high school. 

In high school, I was a fairly successfully cross country and track runner. I ran for all 4 years. I wasn't a child protégé or anything but I was able to make it to state and enjoy the recruiting processes from a few universities even though I chose not to run when I got to college. The little athleticism that I have didn't come until I was in high school. I remember joining the middle school track team; there were a lot of people who joined that year. The coach came up to me after the first week and asked, “There’s too many people this year. Track is a non-cut sport so the option is yours but can you consider quitting and go into football off-season?” So in the competitive nature that I have, I said okay and quit. But that inspired me to go jogging on my own so that I wouldn’t be asked to quit the next year. The difficulty of the task got to me at first. I would triumphantly declare to my mom that I was going to run, then I would jog down the driveway, past our neighbors house, to the corner, just out of view of my house, and sit on the curb until I got bored. Once that happened, I would sprint back so that I would be panting when I came home. It was a very long 30 yards. This worked until our neighbors saw me and asked my mom why I would sit on the curb around the corner. So with my plan busted, I actually started jogging round the block; it shortly became 2 laps. To make a long story short, I wasn't asked to quit my 8th grade year. However, instead of joining the sprinters, I joined the long distance runners because there were less people. I thought it would increase my chances of going to the track meets (most of the meets were during school and I wanted to miss school, so I obviously wanted to go to the meets). It worked. I wasn’t that impressive and I did just okay. It wasn't until my next year in cross country that I started to be what you would call successful. 

Academically, growing up I wasn't that impressive. I graduated from Memorial High School with a 3.4 ish unweighted GPA. When I took the ACT, I scored a 28. I took the SAT but I don't remember my score because the schools that I applied to didn't really ask for it and my pride won't let me remember how poorly I did on it. To my circle of friends, all my scores were low. But looking back, they were deserved with the little effort I put into high school. I was smart enough if I were to just listen in class. I would score okay on the tests and that was satisfactory for me back then. 

I'm currently entering into my fourth semester at Brigham Young University (BYU). My current major is mechanical engineering. I have trouble spelling machanical enginearing. I hope that spelling it isn't an indication of how difficult the major will be! I am also thinking about minoring in spanish and business strategy. I'm technically a sophomore but I am probably not going to graduate for another four more years. I am hoping my major will take me in one of two directions: the medical or energy industries. We will see what happens. 

I have a part time job as I go to school. My first year I did custodial work in the BYU student recreation center known as the Richard Building. Now I am a resident assistant (RA). It is commonly known as the “babysitter” in the dorms. In my opinion, I feel it’s much more than that. It's more of a mentoring job. I just make sure all my guys are doing well and know where to go if they need help. They really look up to me, so there is some pressure to be a good example. It’s a lot of fun. 

Now the confession. I'm dyslexic. 

Even though the whole point of this blog is about how I'm dyslexic I wanted you to see that I am just a regular college student. I have had several experiences that helped me get to where I am now. I also have several goals and desires just as high or maybe higher than everyone else. I also wanted you to get to know me so you can understand where I am coming from and my stupid humor. 

Even though I am dyslexic, I do not view myself as dumb. I humbly believe I am quite bright. When I was in elementary school I had individual specialized tutoring for my dyslexia, and yet I still have academic challenges. Reading and writing are very laborious. I use audio books to help with my slow reading and I always have someone edit my papers before turning them in, like this blog. I love the stories and knowledge that books hold. I love it when I write a paper and successfully express my opinion and thoughts. Even though I have a learning disability, I love learning and think learning is possible for me. I plan on learning for the rest of my life and won't stop even when I am done with school. 

The point of this blog is to spread awareness of learning disabilities (LD), show how learning disabilities affect collegiate students, how to advocate for yourself, and most importantly make sure that everyone understands that learning disabilities are not caused by low intelligence. I was lucky to be born to supportive parents who wanted me to succeed and help me understand these things. My heart goes out to all those who struggle academically that don't know they have a LD, who think they are stupid and school/learning just isn't for them. I also hope that through this blog I can assist those who know they have a LD but cannot find help. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel. 

Even though I have a strong opinion on the matter, I am in no way an expert or feel qualified to teach others about LDs. I am still “book” learning what LDs and dyslexia are. You are welcome to correct me if I'm wrong, I'm okay with that. However, being a living, walking, breathing definition of what a LD is, I can give a brief, long winded summary of what I believe it to be. 

Dyslexia is a learning disability. It is a reading disability. So to start with the big picture first: a learning disability is any impairment in learning that is not caused by low intelligence level (low I.Q. level), poor education (grew up in the amazon and never went to school), physical impairment (deaf or blindness), or emotional or psychological impairments. So by definition, you can't be dumb and have a learning disability. There are three subcategories to LDs. They are impairment in reading (also know as Dyslexia), impairment in written expression, and impairment in mathematics (often referred to as Dyscaliculia). (All the above information came from the DSM V) 

If you are like I was the first time I read the definition of dyslexia then you are probably still confused. Dyslexia is more than the common belief that letters are just switched around or read backwards causing us to make silly reading mistakes like reading ‘soured’ instead of ‘sword’. In fact, that belief is wrong. I have never seen letters change around on a page. If I did, I would think I was on drugs. Dyslexia was best explained to me in this way: language is broken into individual sounds called phonemes; there are 44 in English. Now imagine each one of these sounds were like ABC blocks that kids play with but instead of letters there were sounds with their respected letter combinations. When one reads, speaks, and writes their brain automatically puts the correct phoneme into its right place. Most people don't have to think about it. In a dyslexic’s brain, on the other hand, the blocks are more worn down. So the block for 'A' as in cat and the block of 'A' as in ate look really similar to a dyslexic. So while reading and writing, dyslexics have a hard time putting the right phoneme to its corresponding letter or letters. Now do you understand dyslexia? Probably not. I had to ask close to a billion questions to start to understand it. To put it simply, Dyslexia is a disorder where one cannot match sounds with the correct letter combinations. Because of this, dyslexics often have problems in reading, writing and speaking. 

If you are dyslexic, there is so much available to help you. Find a dyslexic therapist. The International Dyslexic Association (IDA) has a ton of free resources available to help dyslexics and their families. Their website is IDA.com. I am currently reading a book called Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz. It's an awesome book. Everyone should read it. 

I shared a lot of information about LDs and dyslexia and this will probably be the most factual post I do. Like I said earlier, I don't have a PHD on dyslexia and I'm not qualified to teach the deep concepts of it. Instead, I will share my on going success story and what I do to overcome my LD, or in other words, my dyslexia. You are welcome to contact me to give me suggestions or corrections, ask questions, and share your ideas, jokes and even success stories. I am sure I am not the only one.