For me in the UK education system the term Dyslexia was never brought up until I was officially diagnosed, which was in University. Prior to this all I remember was been given extra time in exams at Secondary School as well as College. My friends at the time were envious to why I was given the extra time and in College I was allowed to take exams apart from the main crowd but I had no idea at all to why. I do remember especially in College my first year was a disaster I failed everything apart from my retake of GCSE English which was the only main subject that I didn’t get the required C – A Grade. My second and third year I was given more support in terms of a personal Aid who helped me with how to structure my course and keep on track to allow me to pass. 

I had no idea at the time how much this actually helped me, and its only extremely recently watching a show on Channel 4 Jamie’s (Oliver) Dyslexia Revolution where I started to think Dyslexia was more than just my slow processing of words.

When I was finally diagnosed in University I found out for me my issue isn’t with reading in of itself as I can read perfectly in terms of not getting letters confused; but for me its in the processing part so I read a sentence but the part of my brain that processes what I’ve read into a form I can understand, this part for me is slow, so I find having to re-read things multiple times for it to sink in even then I struggle to keep complex information in my mind and have to try and simplify it. This is not factoring in my brains tendency to go completely of tangent an onto another subject before sometimes coming back to where I am.