Eugenia O’Kelly
Dyslexia Letters
The principle of the school was beaming as he opened the door to show my mother and I what turned out to be an empty classroom filled with rows of desks.
“And this is detention hall number three.”
The principle looked proud. My mother and I looked at each other alarmed.
“And across here you can see our board of exemplary students. These students have gone three months without disciplinary action.”
The board was decorated with the smiling portraitures of students, probably taken from last year’s yearbook photo shoot. This school’s version of “employee of the month”, apparently.
Seven students had apparently managed this great feat.
“Ah, but we need to take his down actually,” the principle was thinking out loud, looking at a smiling blond boy. “I’ll have to tell Mr. Grant.”
Never mind - six students. I looked at my mom - absolutely not here written clearly across my face. Anywhere but here.
After being asked to leave one of the best schools in Manhattan due to my being dyslexic, I was rejected almost everywhere I applied. My standardized scores had been low - low enough to make my current school worried I would damage their SAT average, and so low that now I had only managed to be accepted into two independent schools. My two options: a supportive, single-sex, girls’ private school or a coed private school which appeared to be populated by children with behavioral issues. The principle of this school seemed very eager to have me attend. He had followed up with my mother several times, and was personally conducting the school tour himself. I could sense his motives - I would probably bring his precious board back to seven again.
I continued to try to practice telepathy to my mother, anywhere but here. I’ll go to any other school but this.
—
It makes a great story now, in retrospect - one of many things that become comedic many years later. Needless to say, I chose the single-gender, girls’ school, and it turned out to be a wonderful place for me both personally as well as academically. In time, I excelled beyond my peers and eventually landed at Stanford to complete the last three years of high school. Life’s challenges moved on as academics became easy for me and different challenges dominated my thoughts and time.
Project Inception
At the beginning of this year, when I was looking for an idea of my TSR project, friends and family kept suggesting I return to those years when my dyslexia impacted my academic life and re-visit it through a creative project. I planned to create a narrative comic using an imagegenerating software I created the year before. Thus, at the suggestion of friends and family that due to my phenomenal success at overcoming my dyslexic challenges, I had an opportunity to have a positive impact on others. I thus began brainstorming a comic which told the story of a young dyslexic girl. In retrospect, I have mixed feelings about that decision. On one hand, it was fantastic to learn more about dyslexia and the many and varied experiences of others.
Dyslexia was my primary preoccupation for five years of my life, and revisiting those early times helped me understand how deeply I was impacted by that experience. On the other hand, this project has made me realize that I no longer feel a strong emotional attachment to those years.
Choosing a project topic through which I could not fully engage my emotions was not an optimal choice.
However, I am still committed to the importance of disseminating accurate information so parents and teachers can support children with dyslexia. This, in conjunction with the passion of my friends and family, convinced me to take on this mission. I hope that, through the exhibition and beyond, this project will serve to help someone struggling with dyslexia.
TSR not only gave me the opportunity to develop a tool I hope will inform more people about dyslexia, but also taught me some vital lessons in the process. The greatest thing I have come to appreciate during this project is the division between technological and artistic mediums; and consequently, how bridging these two mediums requires unique planning and the appreciation of the many challenges inherent in melding these disparate mediums. Although I was unable to bridge this division during TSR, I now feel more confident to move forward in improving my software. In addition, I felt inspired watching the other TSR projects develop.
The TSR workshops opened my eyes to the variety of mediums which can be used to creatively express technical and scientific ideas.
Technological and the Artistic Mediums
Completing a project dependent on utilizing software which was still in development while in a foreign country without adequate support was a bad idea - a very bad idea. Hardware failures, software problems, and poor internet connections are always challenging. Add to that residing in a country where I hardly spoke the language and lived in a city with only one electronics store, the bad turned into disastrous. Original plans for trying out aspects of my software’s new features quickly got cut in my mounting frustration. The necessity of reducing my computer’s processing usage to eliminate electrical shorts led to results I was not happy with.
All this resulted in a phase of confusion over the aesthetic details of the project, and was worsened by the fact that I could not settle on a story about dyslexia I was satisfied with. I then switched from a story about dyslexia to a story about genetic modification, which I was very excited about at the time. However, even with the new story, capturing the aesthetics I was after eluded me and technical difficulties prevailed. Even when I could render an image properly, I was not at all happy with the results. It was at this point of desperation that Japan intervened.
By coincidence, I attended a Japanese tea ceremony in the house of a friend’s senpai. He was an amazing guy - an architect in his late twenties who had studied the tea ceremony in order to bring some of the traditional aesthetic to his work.
I arrived at Koisaki’s teahouse after a long day of struggling with technology, and his words about his experience with drafting software had a great effect on me. We discussed how computers remove an essential human element of art - an energy you only get from tactile creative processes. He told me his own experience in trying to establish a harmony between the technical and tactile, a harmony that would produce an aesthetic with the humanity of traditional arts and the facility of technology. Neither of us came to a conclusion during the night. He seemed to think the only way to achieve a balance between the two was to practice the arts and technical side of things separately and then let the lessons from the arts influence his technical creations.
For weeks after this encounter, I debated with myself about the futility of creating art with technology. For three years my work had been focused on increasing efficiency with technology in the fields of art. Now I was at a crisis. My software was not achieving the aesthetic results I desired, I had no one I could turn to for help, and I began to doubt my ability to successfully fulfill my mission.
This is when, for the TSR project, I switched back to the original dyslexia idea and began using what I could - a standard 3D cartoon aesthetic I felt decently happy with and knew I could produce in a reasonable time. At this point several things led me to change my project from a narrative-based comic to a web-based advice website. My host mother, a learning specialist in her own right, and I often discussed the need for better factual information and advice concerning dyslexia. Her misinformation made me realize the importance of having accurate information for different groups - parents, children, and educators. With the help and advice of friends and family who volunteered hours helping me draft advice based on their own experience, the project became what it is at the conclusion - an advice platform for parents and children with dyslexia, narrated by my favorite character from my later designs.
With the project rolling smoothly along, I was able to return to what has been, for me, the most valuable experience of TSR. I replayed my conversation with Koisaki in his teahouse over and over. At first I despaired - thinking technology could never produce art without a significant human touch. Then I began thinking more creatively, brainstorming on my commute to and from school.
Since winter quarter, I have come up with several possible solutions to this problem but have not refined them to what I believe will be the ultimate solution. Currently I believe the solution may lie in an image that is created on the computer with certain elements later touched up by hand. I also believe incorporating greater controls in the software will allow for the type of human artistry seen in digital art. I look forward to having more time to work on these solutions after graduation.
The Science of Dyslexia
This project was the first time in my life I had studied the neural underpinnings of the dyslexic brain. There is a large debate in the field between two theories - the right brain/left brain imbalance (or right brain dominance) theory and the neural-network theory. The right brain/left brain imbalance theory is an older theory, which was around when I was a child. It claims that one side of the dyslexic brain is more dominant. Indeed, dyslexic brains often show more activity in one hemisphere. However, the hemisphere-imbalance theory is not supported by scientific studies and extrapolates from this into the territory of pseudoscience - that the left half of the brain has exclusive control over mathematics and the right brain exclusive input on reading and creativity. It is still the most prominent way of explaining dyslexia, even though it is unscientific and is not based in our understanding of neurology. The neural-network theory is newer and less widely known, but to me, is more compelling as it had the backing of scientific evidence instead of armchair theorizing.
I decided to use the more scientific theory to explain dyslexia, but this caused a bit of friction between myself and my scientific advisor who has been a proponent of the right-brain dominance theory for her entire career as a learning specialist. The neural-network theory is the incumbent and, as she noted, is not gaining much traction in a world that has unquestionably accepted the right brain dominance theory for twenty or more years.
This experience reminded me of the fallibility of science when it comes in contact with the nature of human belief. Although a new theory may provide more evidence and a better explanation of phenomena, people often stubbornly defend entrenched theories. No amount of evidence could convince my mentor, although she acknowledged the flaws in the right brain theory readily enough.
The debate between which theory to accept is important because, to some degree, it determines what type of additional training a dyslexic child should have. The right brain dominance theory often claims that one needs to ‘balance’ the two halves of the brain via strengthening ‘left brain activities’ such as logic, changing diet and exercise, or balancing one’s emotional state. While all of these will undoubtedly help, eating more broccoli and less processed foods is going to be good for everyone dyslexic or not.
The main proponents of the right-brain theory, such as Dr. Robert Melillo, claim that most childhood neurological disorders - autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and certain forms of depression - are all, in actuality, the same thing. Treating a child with dyslexia like a child with autism, or a child with autism like a child with depression, is, to me, ridiculous and ignores the scientific understanding of these conditions. With all the hype behind this theory, I started to wonder if we were back in the dark ages where the sun revolved around the earth.
My disgust of this theory and what I saw as the clinical irresponsibility of the interventions it suggests led me to only address the neural-network theory in my project. In intervention suggestions, this theory is in line with modern cognitive psychology, recommending dyslexics learn to compensate for weaknesses while optimizing their strengths.
Senior Reflection, Beyond TSR
The Senior Reflection has been an enlightening and enjoyable experience. It allowed me to grapple with the divide between art and technology and study the science behind dyslexia. I was able to witness the processes of my fellow classmates bringing their projects to life through workshopping. Witnessing the evolution of these projects had to be one of the more wonderful experiences one can get out of a class. Before TSR, I could not have imagined so many creative ways to express scientific ideas. From circus arts to photo manipulation - the breadth of the projects was a creative influence unto itself. I felt constantly inspired to create new things utilizing these various mediums. This sometimes resulted in a desire to toss out my own project but generally served as a way to vicariously explore various options of creative expression, which I hope to try in the future.
As I sit down and reflect back not only upon my senior year but to my entire time at Stanford, The Senior Reflection has been an integral part of what was the best Stanford had to offer. When researching this project, I spoke to friends, recalling our struggles with dyslexia as children or heard from learning specialists about the struggles of their current students, I could not help but think that life is not as simple as the “you work hard now, and then will live happily ever after” perspective which had sustained me as a child.
Now it is all too evident that my friends who did not get the support they needed when they were young are not thriving now.
They struggle to catch up, taking extra tutoring lessons and moving to less demanding colleges. But I now appreciate that you come to a point in your life when, deprived of the support of family, every step you take to improve yourself is more complicated. As an adult, responsibilities are such that for many of my friends, getting more academic support conflicts with financial and/or time constraints.
I was fortunate to have the support of my mother, who single handedly fought on my behalf, so that today, my dyslexia hardly causes me any problems. But life is hardly that kind or simple - and dyslexia was only the first of many challenges I would face. I still have the unflagging and invaluable support of my mother, but as I have grown older and more independent, the burden of dealing with challenges has grown greater and displaced any of my feelings towards my time struggling with dyslexia. The health problems I faced during my college years were at once excruciating, terrifying, and alienating.
Unlike when I was dealing with dyslexia as a child, there is no sense of security that someone will “make it right”. Being in the hospital with doctors telling me I’ll die, or dealing with the inevitable problems having a chronic illness causes in your relationships, or handling the hours and days of forced isolation so I can use what little energy I have on school work at the expense of having a social life, and the ever constant, ever present, varying, aching, cramping, tearing pain - these are the types of challenges that have defined my college years. I learned no one can make it right; hard work will not make it better, and there really is no ‘happily ever after’ in life.
Still these four years have been the best of my life so far, incredibly challenging and at times frightening, but also highly rewarding. I believe I have learned a very important lesson during my time here, the necessity of being happy regardless of circumstance.
It is my belief that ultimately, despite whatever challenges you must face, you can decide how you want to live your life. If you are going to be happy, there cannot be a ‘happily ever after’ in your mind. It cannot be “after this next hurdle” or “as soon as I don’t have to deal with X”, because there will always be another hurdle and always more X’s, not to mention Y’s, and Z’s. I choose to be happy now - as much of the day, every day, as I can - because ultimately, that is the only time you can change.
With this mindset, I am looking forward to starting a new stage of my life. I am still struggling with health issues and know it will effect my immediate future. But like with dyslexia, I hope that in a few years time these health trials will no longer dictate my life. I am reminded of my dyslexia daily, through misspelled words which usually serve as a source of entertainment. I look forward to the day when the current issues I am facing are only apparent in similar, insignificant ways.
In the meantime, I look forward to continuing with my software and improving it in light of my TSR experience. I cannot wait to see how the lessons I have learned during this past year and the inspiration I have gained from the other TSR students will influence my future projects.