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.
No comments:
Post a Comment