Growing up as a kid with dyslexia and ADHD, I constantly needed help with school. I struggled to pay attention and I struggled to sit still. The teacher assigned another student in the class to help me out and make sure I was staying on track. School was just really difficult.

 

My mom ended up homeschooling me. But I never really learned how to read or spell well enough to feel comfortable with words.

 

So when I got to college, I decided to get help with my dyslexia.

 

I decided to do this tutoring program with Karen because I wanted to understand why we spell words the way we do. I had never thought about where words come from. I didn't realize that they have deeper meanings. I just assumed, "Somebody randomly made all these words up." It all felt really arbitrary.

 

But I discovered that's not the case at all.

 

As I made my way through Karen's course, I learned that there is a deliberate structure to every word. Each part has a meaning, and when you put those parts together, it makes sense. At first, this way of looking at words felt totally foreign. But Karen showed me the patterns and made it easy, and words stopped feeling random.

 

It turns out that a lot of our words come from other languages, and when you learn those rules, those words make more sense. Like, I work at Home Depot, but I never knew why we say "de-po" and not "de-pott." I learned the explanation from Karen: it's French. That was actually very enlightening.

 

Another goal of mine, when I started lessons with Karen, was to be able to pronounce words properly. I've always struggled with saying certain words, and I was tired of being corrected. Sometimes, I would butcher a word so badly that people had no idea what I was saying! So I would try to explain by spelling it out, but the spelling was wrong! That really got on my nerves.

 

Now that I'm able to break down the words and figure out their individual parts, it makes it a lot easier to pronounce them, which is a big help. I'm much more confident now when I'm communicating with people.

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I'm glad I did Karen's program. It really made a difference.