Exploratory

September, 9 2013
CA 101
Amy Cates
Literary Narrative Believe it or not I have not always been as bright as I am now. There was a time when I was the kid who struggled in many of his classes, not the one that people went to for advise on a subject. I hated school because it was extremely hard for me. I was born on May the 11, 1994 in Nashville tennessee. I came from a well to do family and when i was of age was enrolled into private school where i spend the rest of my schooling up through high school. It was evident at an early age that there was something different about me. the first sign was my speech impediment, for the life of me i could not say the letter S every sentence i spoke was a struggle. Then it was reading and spelling. I was behind most of the other kid in both, I read slower and could not spell the same level words as the other kids. It was so bad that in kindergarten i was made to repeat it. Then came elementary school which went much better then preschool had gone, but i still struggled with things. Then in the third grade my parent took me to get tested to determine my mental ability. That is when i found out i am dyslexia. dyslexia is a learning disorder characterized by difficulty reading, spelling, and in young children affects there speech. This was devastating to me, because as a third grader all i wanted to be was normal, and at the felt like people would think i was retarded. through all of this my parents only encouraged me, telling me that i could overcome this setback. That is exactly what i set out to do. Starting in the fourth grade every afternoon i would leave school and go straight to tutoring at the learning lab. I hated this because while all my friends were playing at home i was studying but i knew that it would be worth it. My parents also made me take adrenal which i thought was super embarrassing and i can remember to this day hiding them in the cracks of the table or under my chair so i would not have to take them. I can remember around the middle of the fifth grade was when it got really hard for me. I was struggling in my classes and my parents demanded that i at least got a B or better. My dad was a scary guy and traveled a lot but i can remember when he was in town making me sit in the kitchen for hours studying, and him yelling at me when i would mess up telling me if you want to be anything in life you better get it together. this may sound harsh and cruel, but it spread me on. I was set that i was going to make my dad proud. Around this time i got a new teacher at the learning lab her name was Mrs --, she had a different way of teaching one that took to me. she let me pick the books we would read though she did not take no for an answer but also rewarded me when i got something. After working with her for around a year i finally started to improve. First it was the confine to read in front of my class knowing that i was not going to mess up a word or read to slowly. Then next came that my spelling began to improve along with my vocabulary. My parents were shocked, my teachers at school were surprised, and i was determined to show them i was smarter then they thought. By the end of my sixth grade year I was able to quit going to the learning lab but one day a week. I did not have take my pills any more, I was well on my way to becoming the student i knew i could be. The start of my seventh grade year i was more confident then ever and was ready to take on any challenge ahead of me. At the being of that year my english teacher asked us to write down our goals for that year. At the school i attenuated if you had an A average for the whole year you could be except from the class you had it in, the Goal i wrote down was to be except from every exam. That year was no walk in the park and there were many things i had to over come to reach my Goal. At the end of the year i came into school the day we found out if we were exempt or not confident in every class except one english. English was always my weak point but i knew it was going to be close and the worst part was that was my last class of the day to i had to worry the whole day whether or not i was exempt. Two fifteen rolled around at as i dat there in english class and she handed out the packets to those who were not except my dest was empty. I though am i really exempt or is that just a mistake. then it set in i had done it, i told everyone i was ecstatic. That was the single turning point in my life from then on out i knew that i could and had over come my dyslexia. To this day i still struggle i don’t read as well as some, i still have trouble with spelling everything correctly. What i do know is that i can out work anyone, and through my hard work i have overcome much of my faults and realized my dreams of success in school. Now i am at a great university recognized through out the south. I went into my senior year of high school with a 3.89 and did not have any problem getting into the schools i wanted.