Stephan Wierzbicki
English 100
16 Feb 2006
My Challenges with School and Work
On 11 Feb 2004, with the help of Disabled Student Programs & Service (DSPS) at Santa Barbara City College, I was diagnosed with a short-term auditory memory deficit and dyslexia. I spent most of my general schooling in special education. Now I am in DSPS, and they are helping me with my schoolwork. My boss sees improvement in my incidents reports, although I do still make some spelling mistakes. My boss told me he can understand most of my writing, but he still has to question me on some of the words and sentences that I write.
I have been told by my family and friends that I have perseverance. The word perseverance means, “ to persist (as in an undertaking) in spite of difficulties.” I believe in determination. If I had not been determined and persevered I would have quit a long time ago. I have always tried to make it all the way through to the end of something that I started.
I really had to persevere during my first years at college because my schoolwork was hard to do when I first started in 2001. I had a hard time getting in DSPS, due to not having any current medical records on my disability. All of my records were about thirty years old and I had to start all over again. I had trouble with my insurance company; they did not want to pay for a computerized axial topography (cat scan for short) and some other procedures. After about two years of fighting with my insurance, I was able to get the procedure done. The test came out negative for brain damage. I had been told most of my life that I had brain damage because when I was only nineteen months old my mom found me floating face up in a draining ditch behind our home in Reno, Nevada.
I will persevere even more now that I know what my disability is. I can start getting the help I need to make it the rest of the way through college and get help with work. At this time I am enrolled in DSPS 77, a class that is teaching me writing and reading strategies, and I also have access to the Assistive Technology Center. It is where I am able to work on my essays. There is a program called Kurzweil 3000 that helps me because it reads my essay back to me as I type my words, either by whole sentences or as one whole story. If the sentences or paragraphs do not sound right, I can make the changes right there on the page.As for my regular classes, all of my instructors or professors have tried to help me out with my schoolwork as much they could. I failed Math 100 just because I could not figure out when to put a negative or plus sign in math word problems. My instructor tried for two semesters to help me with it. I spent lots of hours with her in her office going over the problems. When I was in her office I was able to get the problems, but when I tried on my own, I kept getting it wrong so I withdrew from her class.
I know that there will be a long road ahead of me. With the help of DSPS, my family and my closest friends, I will be able to persevere to the very end of my road. It is going to be a learning process for me, but I will be able to persevere through it. Even when I get stuck, there will be my family, friends and teachers to help me find my way out. I am glad that I decided to go back to school. I have learned a lot of things from all of my teachers, some new and some from my earlier college years. All of life is a learning process, so I will keep on learning.