What were your biggest learning challenges in school (academic or social)?

Question sourced from: 63 Of The Best Memoir Writing Prompts To Stoke Your Ideas, by: Barrie Davenport 

So I actually had a lot of challenges in school. The first thing being I'm dyslexic. Which means I mix up things in my brain, so the way information get inputted into my head gets store differently, so when I'm trying to pull it out for my head I have to convert it to what it should have been. And so, I like to think of this, for those who are familiar with that technology, when information comes in it gets hashed and I store it; then I have to rehash when I try to get it out. So there could be some confusion, in regards to information comprehension and another thing is I tend to, with dyslexia, folks tend to skip words or replace words or numbers– they'll look mixed up. Again that's the way things are being stored in the brain coming out. There are different types of dyslexia. 

So I have dyslexia and I got diagnosed when I was about eight. Something else I have, is sound indiscrimination; which means I can't hear the differences between some sounds. That just compounds my dyslexia. There are times where I just I can't I hear a sound, so words can get a little funky and I also can't produce some sound. So in my brain, I know exactly what I want to say, I physically cannot produce those sounds, which is kind of a strange thing. Those, I would say, are kind of the two genetic, inherent things that I struggled with it in school that really affected me. Something to overcome that, I had to put more effort into learning.  I did enjoy school and what I enjoy about school more is the people side, the social side. 

When it comes to the social portion of school, I have never really had a problem. I got along with lots of people. I would say the biggest kind of challenge I had on the social side was, being considerate a outcast, or for somebody who is a “strange” person. That was primarily because I was ethically different than the majority of the school. The majority of the school was Latin, mainly Mexican, there was a handful of folks who were Asian. But I was mixed with American and Hispanic, so I had a mixed background, which was a little less common growing up, compared to now, especially in that town.  I was definitely was different. I even got voted, I believe in junior high, in like the class, like “freak” or “strange” person or “most unique “something like that.  I was a little different, and because of that, I was kind of even more funky and weird and kind of did my own thing. I embrace that kind of “otherism” as well. 

Those were the handful of challenges that I had when it comes to school.