As a very young boy I was confident and people often commented how smart I was. The confidence made me a sponge for knowledge but I was never asked to turn a book report or a term paper to any of my educators. Kindergarten was a wonderful experience and my teacher often called on me to provide the correct answers to an incredibly wide range of subjects; some that might better be known and answer by the girls in our class than a boy. Then there were answers that boys would more likely know that my hand shot up to answer as well. My knowledge seemed to be wide and deep. But we still were not asked to write papers on what we knew.
All of that changed in first grade. Being dyslexic and having add/hd was not known.
My self esteem was crushed and as strange as it may sound it sure seemed to me that the moment all the other classmates that didn’t have a disorder became aware that they had an advantage over me now and it felt like they piled on “ the smart kid “. I didn’t want to go to school and I started developing “ stomach aches “ that I now know were fear based I was suddenly and constantly afraid of being called on and being wrong. Worst of all was to stand up and read. I recall starting to stutter. At home my father piled on with “ WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU “ in a few years I got FAT and developed boobs and never wanted to take my shirt off. I’m not sure that it’s fair to say it was because I forgot the “d “ at the end of a word but I went from feeling brilliant to thinking that I was stupid. I HATED RED PENCILS because everything I turned in was marked, circled, written in the margins, and it seemed that F or D- was the only grade I got. I lived in constant fear of being left back. College was worst of all and bad grades lead to a change in draft status. An I in English Comp turned my 2s to a 1a that meant VietNam was in my future.
Returning alive after serving my sentence for poor spelling, punctuation, and grammar I heard about “ a progressive college “ in Gainesville Fl. With the GI bill paying my way I decided to try again.
The first day in English Comp 101 we were told that there were no red pencils and our grades were based on content and not spelling, punctuation, or grammar. “ we want to know what you THINK! Editors will take care of spelling, punctuation, and grammar if YOU THINK IT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED OR ‘ CORRECTED ‘ “ Our first assignment was to keep a journal and turn it in on Friday.
Our journals had comments written across the top of the first page or in some cases 2 pages. Everyone was reading what was said and sharing the “ feedback “ that our teacher wrote. I didn’t get mine back until class was over and the teacher asked me to stay after class. She held it in her hand and looked at me for a pregnant moment in time. When she handed it back she didn’t let go. She told me that she didn’t want to give it back but she realized that in 4 more days she would get it back again.
There were no red marks but there were three pages starting with how she prepared to read it after first opening it. She saw that unlike other journals that were a paragraph or two mine was 17 pages of hand printed words in different color inks over all hours of the days and nights until I turned it in. She went on the day that it freighters her at first, then it made her laugh and cry and read some lines and paragraphs over several times over the weekend. She told me that she shared some of it with her husband who was a lit professor at U of F and also read some to a visiting author. She told me that they wanted to meet me and I cried G damn it! I cried remembering all of those big RED F’s and ridicule and criticism that made me feel STUPID FOR 20 years.
That misspelled word didn’t matter here.
I maintained a 4.0 average for 2 years with one quarter when I took a double load.
Interesting isn’t it?