(no subject)

[dragonlady7]

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Dyscalculia is wild! I have a moderately impactful but limited form that only seems to affect how I interact with numerals and navigation — I have great spatial reasoning and love geometry and logical proofs, but genuinely struggle with basic arithmetic because the numbers themselves move around like letters do in dyslexia. I’ve always had trouble with numbers in that they feel slippery in my head, like they’re coated in Teflon or grease. This is somewhat literal: when looking at a sequence of numbers, if I don’t slow down and concentrate, they tend to shift and transpose themselves — the sequence 1234567 might become 1243657, and numbers with similar shapes can replace one another — 5 and 2 or 6 and 9 are the most common traitors on that front because they resemble each other if you rotate them in space. This makes me exceptionally prone to what math instructors my entire life called “careless errors” — I knew the theory just fine, but the numbers themselves would seemingly scatter all over the place, and it only got worse under time pressure. My dad has pretty severe dyslexia (and dyscalculia along with it), but because I was always an avid reader and writer and quite skilled with language, my parents never considered that I might actually have a math problem and just assumed I “wasn’t applying myself” when my test scores were dramatically lower in all my math classes than in every other subject. It was my much-beloved high school physics teacher who flagged that something weird was going on, because I was great at all the theory and could explain it perfectly and then would constantly botch the simple arithmetic on tests, and he was very kind and gave me a LOT of partial credit — I do credit him with helping me sustain my love for science and not get intimidated out of the field in general because numbers are often involved. It took me until college to learn that dyscalculia was a separate thing from dyslexia, and if I had been wise I would have tried to get accommodations but instead nearly failed out of General Chemistry and conned my way through the rest of my math credits by taking classes on logic and cryptography instead of anything that relied on actual arithmetic, which was a lot more fun anyway. Even as a Real Live Scientist today, I manage to avoid doing much math by being the resident Qualitative Methods and Comms Guy — my colleagues are more than happy to crunch numbers if I do the heavy-duty manuscript drafting to Make Words Sound Good, so I get to play to my strengths! I also use my phone calculator for basic math, use mnemonics like singing to remember number sequences (seven-digit phone numbers map to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, for instance), rely on Google Maps for directions even to places I’m familiar with because I have trouble remembering highway exit numbers, get friends to check my work on collaborative projects, and still finger-count or use tally marks for basic tasks because it helps me hold onto numbers better, and there’s no shame in that.

If any of this sounds familiar, consider getting tested or read through more online resources! It’s a huge relief to put a name to something you struggle with, especially if it’s something that’s made you feel stupid. A learning disability is not stupidity, and there are many adaptations you can pick up to make life a little easier — I’m proof! (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

*reads* This makes dyscalculia a lot more comprehensible to me. Thank you.