Life, Love & Dyslexia: Sarah’s Journal

"There were only a few things that I liked about school. I liked the pencil sharpener at the front of the classroom. I liked the closets where we hung our jackets. Most of all, I liked watching the big clock in the front of the classroom... when the hour hand pointed to the big three. I became a daydreamer. I would doodle on my schoolwork. I would play with my pencils and make origami when the teacher wasn't looking. I would look out the window and imagine I was somewhere else. I felt like school was a waste of time, I wasn't even good at schoolwork; the letters swirled around on the page, and long lists of math facts made me dizzy. I wanted to go home and build cities in the sand pile. The kids at school would always smash the cities at the playground. If I had been born twenty years later, I suppose I would have been labeled with "Dyslexia" and maybe "Asperger's Syndrome." In the right school, they may have even called me "gifted." But in the 1980s, kids like me were considered "immature" and were called "daydreamers." We became failures and were required to repeat whatever grades we couldn't pass. I told my teachers that I was going to be a mom and an artist, like my mom, so why should I even go to school? I was fourteen when I finally talked my parents into homeschooling me. That was when the woods became my classroom. That was when I fell in love with life and learning. That was when I met Josh. That was when the sky became my ceiling."