From an early age, the world appeared like a puzzle with missing pieces for me. While other kids effortlessly strung words together or quickly grasped other subjects, I faced uphill battles everyday. Being diagnosed with a learning disability, my school days are often filled with frustration of not being able to pick up the lesson as fast as other kids or feeling left behind.
When I was diagnosed with epilepsy, it set my brain back in school. My brain was so exhausted when the day was over and so overwhelmed with information. When I had an epilepsy episode it made me forget the information I was taking in at school. I can hardly remember my times tables because of how intense my epilepsy was at the time.It made me forget memories of my childhood.
After my seizures got cured in the fourth grade I’ve been behind ever since. I’ve been in special education ever since I started school. People in school think kids with any disabilities are dumb and can’t do anything in life.
I always was made fun of when I was in special ed math for not understanding it as fast. People thought special ed classes were easier, and they thought I was just getting an easy pass in life instead of being in the actual class. This was hard to hear from other people, because I was trying my hardest to even pass the special ed classes.
I soon realized that it is okay if I don’t pick up information as fast as other kids do. I’ve learned that having a learning disability doesn’t define me as a person as much as I thought it did. It actually shows me that I can do as much as any other person. I just might need it said to me a couple of times to understand it.
Since I have started to love my learning disability, I started to do peer tutoring to help kids with disabilities learn and understand it’s okay to learn differently. I started peer tutoring in ninth grade and ever since then, I’ve loved helping kids with disabilities. Even though we learn differently we are still people who deserve to show our accomplishments as well as any other person in this world.
