By Liana Mulholland

 2005 Anne Ford Scholar

            ’I’ve been called many things throughout my life.  Lazy, stupid, doesn’t even try

            ’My third grade math teacher doesn’t believe me when I tell her I can’t read the directions she has written on the board.  Again and again I ask her to read them to me.  She refuses. 

            ’So I sit in my third grade math class and draw (the one thing I can do).  The teacher catches me and throws me out of class, saying I’m lazy, not even trying to do my work.

            ’I cry, because I want to do well, to understandto read.  But I just can’t, and I don’t know why. 

            ’The boy who everyone says is the stupidest in the fourth grade call me stupid, so he can feel superior to at least one person, because at least he can read. 

            ’I cry, because I feel that in part, he’s right.  I’m not stupid, I tell myself over and over again.  But it’s hard to believe, when not being able to read is equated with being ’slow.’ 

            ’By fifth grade, I’ve given up, give in.  I think I’m stupid, and there’s no point in trying my best, because it’s never good enough anyway. 

            ’In sixth grade, however, something new happens.  My English teacher doesn’t care that I can’t read.  She can see my imagination desperately search for a way out.

            ’I love books, always have.  When my mother read out loud, books took me to different worlds, always from the reality where people thought I was stupid.  Books"the very things that had defeated me"could also bring me such refuge and happiness. 

            ’My sixth grade English teacher recognized that I could draw, creating worlds of my own where I could lose myself.  She knew that I could also write about these things if given the chance.  She taught me to love to write, even when no one, including me, could read my stories, because the spelling was so bad.  I explained them to her, and she understood.  Suddenly my best was good enough.  I began to think maybe it was alright to try. 

            ’That’s when they assigned me a tutor.  It took one very long, painful year.  I had to relearn everything; sounds, syllables and symbols.  By the seventh grade, after only one year of tutoring and despite hundreds of previous failed attempts, I had learned to read.

            ’Since then I have devoured books with the hunger of someone tasting food for the first time.  I’m trying to make up for six years of yearning, and failing, to read.

            ’But I can’t just enjoy the privilege of being seen as the smart kid, who’s never struggled.  I have a duty to tell people about my dyslexia; I want them to know that learning disabled people aren’t stupid. 

            ’I still have to have the ’talk’ with each of my teachers at the beginning of each school year, explaining my disability and the accommodations I need.  Some are cooperate, some are less so, but the key for me is not to be ashamed"