Wikipedia Rocks!!!!

Although wikipedia is not a legitimate source for a college paper (much to my discouragement), it's good enough for me and this post.  In the words of Michael Scott, "Wikipedia is the best thing ever.  Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject.  So you know you are getting the best possible information." 

So in research of dyslexia, I decided to skip all the medical journals and websites and go straight for the most correct source out there.  I have to admit, Wikipedia definitely gave me justification that I'm not making up being dyslexic.  Lets go through the things Wikipedia says are characteristics of dyslexia:

Preschool-aged children
delays in speech
slow learning of new words
difficulty in rhyming words, as in nursery rhymes
low letter knowledge
letter reversal or mirror writing (for example, "Я" instead of "R")

Early primary school children
Difficulty learning the alphabet or letters order
Difficulty with associating sounds with the letters that represent them
Difficulty identifying or generating rhyming words, or counting syllables in words
Difficulty segmenting words into individual sounds, or blending sounds to make words 
Difficulty with word retrieval or naming problems
Difficulty learning to decode written words
Difficulty distinguishing between similar sounds in words; mixing up sounds in polysyllabic words (auditory discrimination) (for example, "aminal" for animal, "bisghetti" for spaghetti)

Older primary school children
Slow or inaccurate reading (although these individuals can read to an extent).
Very poor spelling
Difficulty reading out loud, reads word in the wrong order, skips words and sometimes says a word similar to another word
Difficulty associating individual words with their correct meanings
Difficulty with time keeping and concept of time when doing a certain task
Difficulty with organization skills
Children with dyslexia may fail to see (and occasionally to hear) similarities and differences in letters and words, may not recognize the spacing that organizes letters into separate words, and may be unable to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word (auditory processing disorder).

I'm going to share some personal examples of some of these things.  In the first section, I used to have a problem with the mirror image thing.  In pre-school, we would be rewarded for spelling our names right for the first time.  I could never do it because I would always write my "e" backwards.  I finally got frustrated and had the girl sitting next to me write the "e" so I could finally get my treat.

My favorite example for blending sounds to make a word is my word "glew."  This happened within the past 5 years when I was telling my family the story of how I found my mom's christmas gift.  She collects snowmen and I was in the store and I saw a cute one that had a LED light in it that changed colors.  I got all excited about it, and in the story I said, "...and then I pushed the button and it glew."  In my backwards mind, glew makes perfect sense.  Flow/flew, blow/blew...why not glow/glew?  Right?  Doesn't it make perfect sense?  I didn't even know I said it wrong until my brother-in-law started laughing at it.

The mixing up of sounds--well this is a family favorite story.  My sister, Tricia, had a dance teacher named Jalahna (I have absolutely no idea how to spell her name.  At least I have an excuse for butchering it).  Well when I was little I would always get her name and lasagna mixed up.  So whenever we had lasagna for dinner, I would say, "We're having Jalahna."  Still haven't lived that one down and probably never will.

Slow or inaccurate reading:  This one is still haunting me.  Just this past semester in school, I was given a final where we had to present our term paper as if we were in a scholarly conference.  My teacher told us to practice reading our paper before the final so that we would be perfect because if we weren't we would lose points.  I practiced, but no matter how much I practiced I couldn't read it without mistakes.  I eventually lost points on my presentation because of my faulty reading.  At that point, I had no idea that reading out loud corresponded with dyslexia.  It has always been a struggle for me to read aloud and now I know why.

That's all I will write for tonight.  There will definitely be more stories associated with things on this list, but I'm pretty sure you are probably sick of reading this post.  I'm off to bed...good night one and all :)