Dyslexia is a disability, no matter how intelligent you are.

I’m an educated woman and a voracious reader. I’m doing a PhD whilst running my own company, in which I write academic essays for a living and read them on YouTube. But there’s a kicker: I’m a dyslexic, but because I’m educated, my disability shouldn’t exist (according to the vast majority.)

I wasn’t officially diagnosed with dyslexia until I was thirty, though my dissertation supervisor during my master's program identified me as one eight years prior. Until that point in my life, no one had noticed how badly I struggled with my disability. I was just “stupid”, “careless”, “clumsy”, and “lazy” regarding my attention to detail and reading skills. If a student always gets A grades, the teachers aren’t concerned with why they’re not getting A*s.

The biggest criticism I received at parents' night was that I “didn’t study hard enough” for my spelling tests and made “careless errors” when reading exam questions. My mother was always concerned about why it took me so long to do my homework every night and how little I read (especially compared to my bookworm cousin.)

Dyslexia exists on a spectrum; for some, their disability is very obvious from an early age. They confuse their bs with their ds and may struggle with deciphering there/their/they’re. Because they struggle with what others deem as…