Dear Dad

September 24th

September 24th,

            I was finally starting to adjust to high school.  I semi understood my schedule and how to get around the school.  Although, I have to admit I still get lost.  What can I say?  It’s a huge school!  The campus has about two hundred classrooms, two lunch rooms, a huge library, two different gymnasiums, and auditorium, a green house, a football field, a soccer field, a baseball field, a track, a swimming pool, and even a rooftop garden.  The garden was beautiful.  I only went up there once to get a pot for my science teacher.  Other than with a teacher’s permission, the garden was off limits to students.  It was full of pots of different kinds of flowers, fruits, and vegetables.  The roof was lined from corner to corner with plants and everywhere you turned there was a different color flower.  The gorgeous array of colors and the fact that no one ever went up there made the rooftop a quiet and serene place to sneak off to when I didn’t want to go to class.  So, I was up there often all my freshman year.

            Today I went up there during math.  I hate math.  I’ve had a total despise towards it ever since I could remember.  It just makes absolutely no sense to me.  I mean, it was okay when it was 2+2 and 8-4, but now they’ve added the alphabet in and it all just seems like one big blur of a problem.  Math just doesn’t click with me.  Neither does reading or spelling or school in general.  If you must know, the reason I have a problem with all these things is because I have dyslexia.  It makes it hard for me to learn like everyone else but, I’m determined not to let it stop me.  I try my hardest at all of these things and despite my problem I’ve found that the one thing I’m good at is writing.  I love to write.  It frustrates me at times because I can’t always put all of my thoughts into words but when I can, I love what comes out of it.  That’s why I took writing this year.  That girl on the first day just doesn’t understand.  I chose to take writing because it’s the one class that I’m able to do work that’s as good as the others in the class.  I haven’t told anyone that I have dyslexia.  The only person who knows is my mom.  She wanted me to tell my teachers so that they would be able to help me if I was having a hard time but, I didn’t want to tell anyone.  I didn’t want to be treated differently than the other kids.  I wanted to be treated like there was nothing wrong with me, like I was just another student working as hard as they can.