A pen of thorns

 

Whenever I think about the difficulties I experienced with writing at school I am taken back to an image I used for a dyslexia project I did for my first dyslexia specialist qualification. Some of you may also remember it. It summed up dyslexia for me to a tee at that time. It was just a hand wearing an industrial glove and holding a pen covered in rose thorns. No non dyslexic will ever comprehend how the simple act of putting pen to paper can be so difficult and painful for dyslexics.

Going back to my secondary school days I can remember that I would look at others in my class writing neatly in joined up writing using their fountain pens. They left no trail of ink or blots as their hand glided over the page with all the ease of a professional skater on the ice. Their writing flowed easily across the page like water flowing down river. Sentences and paragraphs all neat and tidy, spelling all correct miraculously appeared. I couldn't get it together at all.

The fountain pen felt uncomfortable in my left hand, my writing didn't flow it stuttered, I had to drag it across the page. Whilst not quite as actually prickly as the pen in the picture it metaphorically might as well have been. No sooner did I put pen to paper there would be a mess of ink trailing behind my left hand. My hand would be covered in ink as I tried hard to engage in the act of writing on a piece of paper. As for the writing itself sheesh it was a total mess.

Then there was my spelling to contend with. It was like trying to drive down a road full of lollypop ladies. It seemed like every third word I would have to stop and contemplate how to spell something. Every five yards I drove down this road one of lolly pop lady step out and stop me then another one would step out and stop me as soon as the other had gone. I couldn't get any flow at all. 

Needless to say it took me ages to write anything and every time I handed in work a teacher would comment on my messy work. If I was lucky they wouldn't do it in front of the rest of the class. For those of you who may not know what a lollypop lady is they are people who stop traffic to let school children cross the road in safety.

By the time I was 14 years old I have had enough of school, well the learning part of it anyway. So I stopped attending. Not altogether though I would go to art and music but for me the rest of school was irrelevant. It was a lot easier to skip school back then than it is now. I had lots of inventive ways of skipping school.

Years later in my first year at university I got feedback from a lecturer for a 2000 assignment I completed. I had spent many hours handwriting this assignment. Gawd only knows how many pieces of paper were screwed up and thrown in the bin before I had completed it. Every word was written in upper case because that’s the only way I can write legibly. I checked every word for spelling errors many times. It was like painting the Sistine Chapel for me.


The first comment the lecturer wrote, in the dreaded red ink I might add, was,” doesn’t writing like this take a long time? How can you ever expect to pass any exam writing like this?”  His comment took the gloss off the fact I got an A- for the assignment.

I moved to a different university for my second year and it was here I was assessed as being dyslexic. It was then I was given access to disabled students allowance to buy a computer and assistive technology. It was then I started my journey of discovery of my dyslexia. More importantly I didn’t have to do any writing by hand. I was finally liberated from that pen of thorns.