Having struggled through school and feeling I’d failed, I went to college and continued to fail. College was a continuation of my school years.

An education fail

My parents keeping my diagnosis and symptoms from the very institution that could have helped me, my education was always going to fail, and where my teachers could have asked questions, they didn’t.

My teachers were aware I was falling behind my peers, because conversations between the school and my parents took place, and those issues were continually being highlighted in my yearly reports, but they never acted on either of those.

I have my own understanding on why school let me down. In part I suspect a contributing factor was the difficulty the school inevitably had with working with my father, in the same way my Specialists had. As a consequence of that, I had little choice but to go to college and enroll on a secretarial and shorthand course. I fell into line with the idea of secretarial college, but I wasn’t happy.

College struggles

In college, it didn’t help that I was given a manual typewriter that I was struggling to use with my left arm. Because there were only a handful of automatic typewriters at that time and I didn’t know why I had a problem with a manual typewriter, and I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. I remember struggling to press the keys down on my affected side. I remember being told to speed up, but couldn't and continued to fall behind.

Heading out to hospital

That was one issue. Another issue was that I had a hard time getting shoes to fit because of a bunion, so in my first year of college my father took the decision that I should have the bunion removed in term time and having been absent from college for around 4 weeks, I had an enormous amount of catching up to do. A few weeks later because the operation wasn’t a success, I left college again and headed back to hospital for a second operation.

Back in college

On my return to college I was still struggling to catch up and understand. I wasn’t grasping my studies at all. I felt embarrassed that others were making progress and I wasn’t. For my parents, putting me through college I felt, was a box ticking exercise.

The working world and making strides

After leaving college I moved into the working world and although that didn’t start off too well, my working life slowly improved once I’d moved to a leading firm of lawyers. It was a much bigger company and I soon settled into working life. Within a year I had moved my way up to working for a Partner in Commercial Property Law. I excelled and began to make a name for myself.

Making new strides

After a couple of years and having to work more late evenings that I cared to, I requested a move to another department and was given a new Partner to work for who had just joined the firm, this time in Commercial Litigation. It felt good that I was making strides again.

That company would be my working home for the next few years. I had made lots of friends and was happy at work, for the first time.