Handling dyslexia while becoming a paramedic

As someone who has always struggled with academia, I knew I was never going to be the next Marie Curie. I plodded along with my studies, hardly expecting to get anything higher than a ‘C’ grade at school, which never seemed to reflect how much extra work I put in. I was sometimes complacent with my results until I started failing my 2nd year exams at university. I felt there were many reasons for failing: I was running out of time to write down answers and revised material would fall out of my head at any given opportunity—so I decided to get myself tested for dyslexia. It felt odd having to go through numerous tests at 22 years old to check my spelling, pronunciation and cognitive skills, but astonishingly, I discovered I was dyslexic.

NHS Choices (2015) defines dyslexia as a common learning difficulty which does not affect intelligence and around 1 in 20 people are thought to have it in some form. I felt reassured that it was normal to have the memory of a goldfish in exams and many problems I had experienced over the years now seemed trivial. The university was supportive in setting up my additional support and recording equipment, and suddenly this semi-competent academic appeared. Now, I can better navigate university with my strange new diagnosis, and hopefully use it to benefit my work.