New Blogger here....with dyslexia

I am a shy person, exploring the idea of blogging. I like to write but I am not a writer.

One of my main problems is I have dyslexia and I don't always see my errors.So if I spell a word wrong, please be nice about it, I most likely will spell that word perfectly the next time.

Dyslexia is a strange thing, my brain is wired differently to those that do not have dyslexia. It is good to know people can recognise it now and children might get help for it.

I was not diagnosed until I was seventeen years old, I had already failed my GCSE English twice. I went through school labelled slow by the other kids and lazy and even bewildered by my teachers.
I was inclined to daydream, especially in science but it is hard to stay interested when you are not expected to do well. I still daydream.
It was frustrating for my parents because they knew I was bright, if tested I could do brilliantly at spelling, I learned to read early, they had high expectations for me. But at school I never lived up to those expectations, ignorance from a teacher can be soul destroying. Teachers would put me on the naughty table by myself in primary school because my work was untidy.
While all the girls that the teachers called clever, wrote neatly, coloured in without going over the lines and had poker straight hair. I was disorganised, had messy writing, unfinished work and curly hair. I always identified with Helen Burns from Jane Eyre.
And Jo March from Little Women who was not dyslexic but she was disorganised and clumsy.
By the age of seven I was an outsider to my classmates and the teachers. I had one or two friends but that caused frustration because they did well at school and though I was just as clever and quick, I did badly and was written off as underachieving and below average.
By the time I was ten, I learnt that if the teachers pick on you, it is a green light for the bullies, nobody will protect you.
I believed I was slow because it took me longer to copy of the chalk board than everybody else.
Going to an all girls high school helped me, because we had streaming. I was in the lower stream and I was suddenly always top of the class. I was frustrated by the easy work and longed to do the harder books in English Literature, because despite everything
I was a big reader and found a gift of analysing books and character, I also loved history too. But it is tough to do well when the teachers expect you to fail your exams in the end.

One day when I was 17, I was in a college library, I opted for a further education college to do my re-takes, rather then school.
I found a leaflet about dyslexia, it described the symptoms, I was reading about my life. I found a teacher in that college that specialised in learning difficulties, she tested me and diagnosed me as dyslexic. It changed my life because I got extra time for my exams and passed them as a result. I had coaching to help me work through my coursework. I found that because of my dyslexia, I struggle to work when there is noise and chatting around me, this is why in school my work was often in complete and I needed longer to copy from the board. It is the reason why my writing is messy and I could never underline titles straight even with a ruler.
Dyslexia is the reason that I get letters mixed up, I miss read words and I could never do French dictation. What a revelation that I wasn't slow but such frustration that my education was wasted by the ignorance of my teachers.
I have met many people that went through similar experiences to me in school due to undiagnosed dyslexia, people that were labelled stupid, slow, lazy who failed exams and have to work three times harder to get the results of a none dyslexic person with the same intellect. And that is the biggest frustration, dyslexic people often have above average intelligence but if you ask a dyslexic person for directions, you are likely to get even more lost then you already are.