My Lifelong Fight by Megan

My Lifelong Fight by Megan - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

I was huffing and puffing just as the flight attendant announced the last call to board the plane to Atlanta from Boston. With a huge sigh of relief I hopped on, my glasses struggling to stay on the tip of my nose and my ballerina bun now looking more like a half-eaten meatball. Although this situation may appear to be that of a scattered fourteen-year-old frantically running through Logan Airport, it is not. At times I am disorganized just like any other teenager, but the real reason I nearly missed my flight was because of my dyslexia.
People who struggle with this pestering disability can understand the constant obstacles we face, but it is often overlooked by those who cannot relate. My dyslexia not only interfered with my daily life experiences, but also in my elementary school classrooms. As I watched my friends flaunt their new reading skills to Mrs. Spall, our first grade teacher, I found myself sitting in the corner trying to organize the letters in my head. Everything looked so unclear to me, and my heart raced as the letters scrambled on the pages. What I thought was the letter “d” was really a “b”. This would come back to haunt me in the fifth grade when we were required to write personal essays describing our travel destinations. When the time came to present the essays to the class, I realized that I had written that the smells in New York City were “dad” instead of “bad.” I was humiliated and wanted to bolt, but I would not let this mishap hold me back from my fullest writing potential.
Through elementary school things did not get easier. While my friends moved up in reading levels and into chapter books, I sat with, Mrs. Black, my motivational tutor. I worked on my reading and writing skills, sacrificing Girl Scout meetings and time with my best friend, Emily, to wrangle these challenges. While my classmates would spend an hour on homework, I would spend three. I often felt overlooked because I was detached from my peers who were busily engaged in fun activities while I spent that time with my nose in books. After dealing with more stress than a fifth grader should have to, I was tested for dyslexia and found a school that would teach me to handle it. I felt freer: this gave me wings with which to fly.
I prefer not to call dyslexia a “disability.” I see it as a hurdle, just like one jumps in track. Dyslexia may have challenged me in elementary school, but it has helped me learn to reach my fullest potential in middle and high school. Once I transferred to St. Francis, I learned to write properly and control the words on the pages I read.
My stroll through Logan turned into a frantic sprint when I realized the sign I read as gate D41 to Atlanta was gate B14 to Chicago. That pesky D and B reversal caught me yet again. Panic, and my experience with cross country track kicked in, as I took off down concourse B to my gate. As I seated myself, reflecting on my past hour filled with anxiety, sweat, and scrambled letters, I realized that I wanted to do everything possible to prevent that from re-occurring. From then on, I realized that dyslexia would be a constant life challenge, but I would not let it deter me. I committed myself to working diligently to conquer what I considered my everyday imperfection. In many ways I have overcome it because I am in rigorous reading and writing classes, get the “d” and “b” mixed up less, and can write an intelligible, well organized paper. Dyslexia is a challenge, but it is irritating, not debilitating. I will not and have not let it defeat me. Instead, I defeated it.