“In Greek mythology Sisyphus was a king punished by being compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.” – Wikipedia

As a dyslexic and the founder of  Ghotit, a company offering writing assistive technology for dyslexics, I am many times asked by non-dyslexics to discuss what is dyslexia.

For people not familiar with dyslexia, it is quite difficult to grasp how dyslexics cannot remember the correct spelling of even simple words.  They are dumbfounded by my explanation that I might dedicate 10 minutes to “memorize” the spelling of a simple word, only to completely forget the correct spelling the next time I need to write the word.

I recently read an article called “Dyslexia and Intelligence” where it was written “For people with dyslexia, the natural fluidity and flow of letters and words coming together can be laborious. Each time a letter is encountered it is as if it’s the first time.” When reading this phrase, I immediately thought of Sisyphus, and how his punishment was to roll a boulder up a hill throughout eternity…

Are dyslexics “cursed” to forever relearn spelling of words as if it’s the first time?

The answer is yes… I don’t see myself as a cursed person (I consider myself rather lucky) however from a writing viewpoint dyslexics must sustain a lifelong and tedious struggle to spell correctly even simple words. Computers, spell checkers and writing assistive technologies have definitely eased the writing challenges, however writing for dyslexics is and will remain a lifelong struggle.

I have the feeling in recent years that I am kind of an odd man out when it comes to my opinion on my affliction of dyslexia. Wherever I look, it seems that people are proud to be dyslexic and would choose to be no other way. It seems that there are more success stories than I can shake a stick at. Albert Einstein, Richard Branson and Woopi Goldberg have wonderful success stories that inspire and humble this mere mortal. There are stories from the mighty to the meek on the net of their determination and success. So why the heck am I such a “looser?”

In my own defense I have also read articles that assert that 40% of those incarcerated in the federal penal system are dyslexic, almost 8 times the censuses estimate of the number of dyslexics in the general population. Articles have reported higher than normal levels of depression and suicide. Articles about frustrated dyslexics that are unemployed or under employed. I have read about concerns about the school systems inability to recognize the affliction and teachers that have dealt harshly and inappropriately with the afflicted.

I am not sure how to interpret all this info but I have come to the conclusion that maybe I am not alone and maybe, just maybe, all issues related to dyslexia have not been resolved. So I offer my humble story.

I am in my 50′s and work as a Foreign Service telecommunications and computer worker. I have a large garden and a couple daughters. I have learned much of what I do from courses provided by my employer. I was posted 3 years in Caracas Venezuela and have done temporary duties around the world. Today I am working full time keeping a network running and I am working on a Bachelor of Information Technology at Carleton University.

Before attending school I was a highly energetic and enthusiastic child. I was really interested in the world and an avid rock and fossil collector. Later I grew seeds and tried to figure out what made them grow by slicing and dicing the germinated plants. I then examined the pieces with my magnifying glass. I studied the bugs and I tried to make roses grow from cuttings, like I could get willows to grow. Forests and streams kept me entertained as I studied the stars and planets as time went by.

I eagerly anticipated going to school and in the summer before going to school my older sister tried to teach me the alphabet and how to print my name. My parents didn’t send me to kindergarten because it was not mandatory and they didn’t see any reason to do so. My enthusiasm was short lived. Detentions and the straps began in grade one because of poor spelling and poor hand writing. In grade two I made biweekly trips to the principle’s office with tears and trembling to explain why my spelling and handwriting  were so poor and to promise to work a little harder. The principle Mr Horne was very nice about it but he scared the crap out of me.

When grade 3 started I along with 8 others were singled out and put in one class with a dozen others. Our group of 9 were given a pile of work books to do and were all but left to rot. We were told that if we completed all the workbooks we would pass otherwise we would fail. When parent teacher interviews came along my parents were told that I was retarded and would probably make it though 6th grade but not past 9th grade. We all failed.

The next year we had a teacher that worked hard to mend fences and rebuild shattered personalities. I remember that it seemed hopeless and I began to become a very tough customer in school. We were all ostracized, called names and picked on. From then on the only comments that I got on anything that I wrote was that I needed to do something about the writing and spelling, “buy a dictionary”, “learn to spell”, “you should know how to spell that”, “if you don’t know how to spell it, look it up.” I found that the more I worked on the spelling lists we were given the poorer I did. After some time I didn’t study the spelling list because I could get 40% without  studying but with studying I would get about 20 to 25 %.

I became aware that it was through education that I would get where I wanted to be; and so I worked longer and harder than of my classmates as the years went on. It was from my upbringing that I learned that rewards would reflect the amount of energy and time expended. The marks were not forthcoming and constant re-evaluation led me to work longer and harder. I tried to work smarter.

Somewhere along the line I made a conscious decision to take some alternative path than the one I seem to be going. By grade 5 I had decided that schooling would be a way out of the community and a way to get away from my parents, socially and psychologically. I had to work hard and had begun working on my school work with reckless abandon. For example we were given one report to do in grade 5 about some industry in Canada. I wrote an essay on the Iron Ore Industry in Canada. I then wrote one on the Coal and Coking Industry, then one on Open Hearth Furnaces and another one Steal Industry and What An Alloy was, for no extra marks.

I poured my energy into understanding the universe to a much higher degree than my peer group. It was not easy because I was the only person that believed that I was capable of this feat. My reading skills and handwriting  were not up to the task. Teachers and parents dissuaded me from this route. Though I seem to have some skills as a mechanic, a welder and in sports, these paths offered little or no satisfaction.

At times it seemed I was lauded as a genius, and when it came to reading or during spelling bees I was the town fool. I had a very hard time understanding what was expected, I seemed to misunderstand what was asked in the written question. I seemed to have large amounts of information but never the answer they wanted. When they asked the question: “There are four trees and two bushes how many plants are there?” I would answer ” 4 trees and 2 bushes.” Wrong there are 6 plants. Once we were given a poem to interpret. In the poem a holy man took pity on a starving cur and began to feed him, one day the cur bites the holy man, he goes out into the community and tells others about the dog and they find the dog and beat him to death. The conclusion that everyone in class came to was “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” The one exception was my conclusion which was “beware of the holy man his bite is more dangerous than the lowly curs.” Of course I got 0% on that assignment. I have forever been coming to different conclusions then other people.

It was not that I did not understand the material, I did. I had a number of situations where I would teach others a subject to find at the end of the year the people that I was assisting got better marks than me. In grade 10 one of my classmates needed serious help in biology. I spent a lot of time with this guy teaching him the material in exchange he taught me some Cree. When the year ended I didn’t speak much Cree and he got a much better mark then I. I seldom missed a day of school and yet I had this impression that somehow I had missed some great and vital truth that would have made all the difference. I felt that that truth was given on one of the rare days that I missed. I was forever looking over my shoulder trying to glean some understanding that just was not there.

I believed for many years that what afflicted me was some undocumented issue for which I would never find a cause. It was a lonely road to travel alone.

I left school after grade 10. At that point I could not understand why I seemed to work so hard for crappy results when all around me people were getting good results with little or no effort. Culturally I had learned that hard work leads to good results, but this was not my reality. I also left because circumstances were such that school and life situation were in opposition.

I worked and menial jobs for a few years. I found the people I normally had to deal with and the task I was given left a void. I found that people that had skipped through school and never seem to put in effort were now becoming my boss. Acquaintances that through indiscretion had been incarcerated were coming out of jail, where getting paid better than myself. The situation was unbearable. I believed that I could and should do better.

I returned to school in a different city and a different school. Wow it didn’t take long and I couldn’t do anything right when it came to writing. A social studies teacher was the first to point out that my papers were streams of conciseness and not an argument. After that everyone seemed to have comments about my writing. My punctuation was wrong, my capitalization was wrong, my sentence structure was confusing, subject and predicates were normally backward, my arguments were clumsy and poorly constructed, I could not write a parallel sentence, etc. Since the English teachers had been transfixed on spelling for so many years they had failed to correct other elements of writing.

I worked and worked, how could I be so smart and so dumb at the same time? I completed high school with a 60% average just sufficient to get into university. I started a university degree in science, majored in chemistry. My marks were just getting by but I still could not excel. I started by studying 10 hours a day and sleeping 8, but I had to do better so slowly the hours of study grew until I was studying 16 to 18 hours a day, sleeping 4 hours and the rest were used to get to and from school, eating, keeping the bills paid and exercising. The marks were getting worse.

While my fellow students studied I studied. While they partied I read about the great depression, while they skied and played football I tried to understand Grainard reagents. While they slept I did triple integrals looking for the gradients. While they drank there coffee and ate their croissants I worked on critical orbits.

When summer began they got jobs in their field of study and I could only get the old menial jobs operating a shovel.

So I visited a psychiatrist. His assessment was that I was perfectly normal, maybe I needed a psychologist. And so I went to visit a number of them. I was told that I was not intelligent enough and so I should find a job I can do, which I did not believe. I was told that I was doing myself in and trying to live down to my parents expectations, which I did not believe. I was told I had an Oedipus complex, which I did not believe. I was told that I was not working hard enough, which I did not believe. Finally I found an education specialist who in just a few short hours declared that I was dyslexic with high IQ. At that time I was 25 year old and that was more than 25 years ago.

Holly crap, I was not the only person on the planet that had this affliction. He let the universities section that works with disabled students know. They arranged to have someone sit with me to advise me on how improve my study skills. The lady felt that I had excellent study skill and left after a couple of weeks without a single suggestion. They let me use their PC, which was a new tool 25 years ago. This made no perceivable improvement. And so after a semester and they had exhausted their ideas they asked me and then let the faculty of science know that they had a dyslexic student, could they accommodate me? At that time I was a 4th year student. They accommodated me by expelling me from the institution. I had the tenacity to approach a faculty advisor to ask why, and was told that “university is for the best and the brightest, and I definitely did not fit the bill.”

I started reading about Learning Disabilities and found out about elasticity of the brain. I read about children that had half the brain missing and still functioned very well. I read about people that had had very severe brain damage such as strokes and even gun shots and were able to regain function. And so I tried all kinds of experiments in an attempted to shape the brain.

Examples were, to learn how to spell a word; I would use a word dozens of time in written sentences for a day or two and then leave it alone for a week or so to see if I could spell it. This proved to be marginally successful in the short term but no measurable change over the longer term. I tried thought experiments where I would try to visualize the brain setting up new paths. I worked a long time on this but what happened was after a couple of month I started having sleep paralyses. Sleep paralysis is when you wake up from sleep, because you have this sense that something bad is about to happen and find yourself paralyzed for 30 seconds or a minuet until all other systems come on line. I tried to remember lists. It didn’t work at all. I tried to spell words backwards. My spelling got worse. I tried remembering number lists. The more I did it, the worse it got. I tried mnemonics, where I would try to come up with some saying or rhyme to remember how to spell words. I could not remember the mnemonics, outrageous amounts of time were being spent to no avail.

With time spelling did improve especially with the use of computers. My learning disability appears to be intractable.

After being expelled from university I did get a few jobs in chemistry. I analysed water in the Alberta water shed and aquifers looking for heavy metals, and some fish looking for heavy metals. This was an important study that had an impact on anglers. I worked for a while on novel methods of analysing blood samples using a graphite furnace and atomic abortion spectroscopy. Novel methods of analysis with gas chromatography looking at air pollutants. And some work in the oil sands looking at why certain areas were not as productive as others. I loved it but these were all temporary jobs just above the minimum pay. Because I have no credentials I was unable to convert them into a full time living wage.

I had to find another job and so I got a certificate on how to fix a PC. This I was eventually able to convert into a real job with a living wage. I have worked my way up to a job maintaining a real world network maintenance job.

Recently I re-entered university in an attempt to get credentials in the field that I am now working, computer science. To get accommodations I had to be retested by a qualified psychologist. Testing showed that my mathematical skills are in the 5th percentile. That is to say only 5% of the population do math as well as I do or better. On the other hand my language skills are in the 95th percentile. What this says is that only 5% of the population read and write as poorly as or worse than me.

Studying is every bit as difficult at my age as it was 25 or 30 years ago, maybe worse.

I have been asked what effects has it had on my life?

I am socially awkward which is quite common among dyslexics. Because I don’t read the materials and have the same interests as my peers I come from a different head space. Allusions and references that others make are missed. The subjects that I know something about are not part of polite conversation and so I seem to have little to talk about in social situations. I value things different than most people I know and therefore am dismissed.

Maybe more important Dyslexia left me bitter and twisted as a young man. In part this exacerbated the problems associated with interpersonal skills.

It made it difficult to find jobs as I didn’t represent myself well through my resume which too often had spelling errors and I did not come across as amiable and approachable in my demure . Because of the lack of credentials I am forced to do jobs below my level of competence and am unable to exploit opportunities that others with similar educational background. I all but completed a 4 year degree in chemistry for example but because I do not have a university degree I cannot work as a scientist, I can’t even get a job as a technologist. Because I have no credentials I cannot get a job as say the lab supervisor or quality control specialist. I could not even get a job around the lab that paid a living wage.

Colleges, universities and professional organizations act as gate keepers. Their responsibilities include making sure that minimum standards are met so that we can have order within our society and confidence that we are getting the services we are paying for. But if you are dyslexic for example and misinterpret a significant number of the questions or muddle your response you are summarily dusted off and put out with the cat litter.

Just because you are intelligent, talented, a good rock collector or good looking you are not entitle to a decent living. If you are unable to convey to the community you are trying to enter, that you are competent by answering their questions, not your questions, you are not welcomed.

I have been asked, would I choose not to be dyslexic if I had the choice?

Would I choose to be diabetic, deaf or cerebral palsyc if I had a choice? I think that anyone that would choose to have a disability really is in need of psychiatric help. The world is a difficult place. It abounds with, prejudice, hunger; fear and political strife. Natural disasters and economics throw curve balls into the lives of even the most successful. To choose to be disadvantaged is an outrageous concept.

There are those that say look at what Albert Einstein, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Whoppi Golderg or Richard Branson, have accomplished and they are dyslexic. I have looked and these people and I am impressed. But they did it because of or in spite of being dyslexic is extraordinary.

We are not all extraordinary. I am not. I am a working Joe, with all the fears, needs, hopes and dreams of an ordinary guy. I live in the world with 6 billion other people and have to compete, survive physically, economically and emotionally. So I would rather not be dyslexic.

It seems that as time goes on employers and institutions rely more and more on written testing as the entrance criteria for employment. It is a way to weed out the “wanabes” from the “can does.” It is a way to wheedle down the thousands of applicants to a manageable number of perspective employees when there are just a few jobs. With years of work experience in the department I doubt that I could pass these entrance exams today.

I did not choose to be dyslexic but so is my lot in life, I need is make the best of it. In order to survive I need to work a little harder, so be it, I need to work a little longer, so be it, I do with fewer vacations or fill my vacations with skill development, so be it.

I have been asked how does it affect my daily life?

I have to make lists and lots of notes so that I don’t forget things. I have to work harder and a little smarter. I am still advised by people that don’t have dyslexia about how to excel and succeed. I still avoid writing and reading unnecessary material. I prefer to work alone and don’t seek positions of leadership or the lime light. I try to keep my opinions and views to myself.

Why can’t I just forget the past and live in the here and now?

What ever happened is done and finished. What we do today will change our tomorrow. So let it go.

Though I live in the here and now, the past keeps on coming back to haunt me. The problems associated with dyslexia such as poor memory, poor spelling and the painful memories, just keep on creeping in to undermine the best intentions and hard work of today. I try to blank it out and move on.

Has being Dyslexic changed my views on some aspects of the world?

I believe that my view have always been different than my peers. I am not sure how others view the world but the diagnoses of dyslexia so late in life began a long process where I changed my view and opinions of the world around. I began to be more positive and more approachable and a little less confrontational. I became more tolerant of others and less self obsessed. I think I became more helpful of others.

Dyslexia has given me the sense that life is a whole lot more difficult then I imagined as a kid. I am fearful for the dyslexics that are coming behind. It seems that opportunities will cut before they get a chance.

Dyslexia has taken over my life and affects what, where and when I do what I do.

Do I ever feel ashamed of not being able to do certain tasks?

At first blush I don’t think I have any serious embarrassment in relationship with my condition but this has not been always the case. In my younger days I strove to hide and had an intense sense of shame and often felt sorry for those that had to deal with my shortcomings or work with me. I had certain skills and abilities but what others seem to see was the problems. I was the last to be picked to work in a group and I had many an embarrassment of being turned down when I asked to work with the better students. Way to often I was one of the last out there forced to work with the slackers and was left to do the work alone.

Today I get an occasional sense of shame about not being able to do certain tasks, such as remembering people’s names, but normally it is more of a sense of anger and frustration. I dislike excuses and often fell that dyslexia is a crappy excuse. This leads to frustration, anger and self loathing. What I find is that I have to go back and relearn things that I use to know. There is a never ending battle to keeping up and relearning yesterdays new. I get exhausted with the effort.

Do you feel that Dyslexia holds you back from doing certain things in your life?

I am unable to work in the field of my choice. I am not a scientist as I had chosen to be. I don’t live, work and hobnob in the corridors of pedagogy. I am not consulted on the preponderances of our age.

I could have been “a somebody.” I believe that I could have pushed the envelope; I could have been a contender. Instead I am struggling to write and do the basics, I am forever trying to understand the written word and the people I live and work with.

I was for a long time economically challenged. Thirty years of self improvement and hard work is paying off. I have found my own way. It is different than anything I would have imagined. I found a wife that helps me a lot. She is my inspiration and anchor.

I have been asked why don’t I just accept the situation and be happy?

While I live and breathe I have this need to do better. I just cannot lie down and allow the world to role over me. If I had, you would have found me on your street corner with hat in hand crying “alms for the poor.”

I think we have had enough of my Hubertus.