“Hello, my name is Aditya. I have Dysgraphia. I was diagnosed with it roughly when I was 10-years-old. It’s a genetic disability that affects fine motor skills. It wasn’t the easiest growing up with a disability like this. Initial days, the school I was in for two years had no negative events or triggers. However, this got tougher after I moved to another school in another city. To say it bluntly, the teachers and the management did not understand learning disabilities would be an understatement. I was berated almost daily, both by classmates and teachers. I was forced to repeatedly write notes in most classes as a punishment. On the other hand, my classmates would refuse to help me, accuse me of being given undue attention.” 

“I was in that horrid position for four years. It affected me mentally a lot. I got shifted to a special school that had one of the best teachers that helped me through my learnings and kept me going towards my goals. It took me years to adapt to new places because of being in the aforementioned “mainstream” school. My coping up mechanism is no different. I have to come up with strategies or some support from any academic space that I am studying in.

Since I cannot rely on muscular muscle memory, I have to read and understand on my own as a gift and a disguise for me. I end up reading most of the things and understand its theory, not practical knowledge using visualization and connecting concepts. I had great help from my parents and the teachers in my special schools” 

He added, “One advice I would tell anyone with LD or someone that knows an individual with LD is that one’s self-esteem is at stake here. This disability isn’t everything, with LDs having their unique talents. In fact, famous well-known scientists in social or physics science are to be suffering from LD. I would say the faster you accept it, the better you are treated, and building a support system is very important. I am currently fighting through odds and pushing myself towards things that help me grow as a person.”

“Disability is not one’s definition but one’s extension,” said Yash, another student diagnosed with borderline ADHD. He added I don’t have anything new to add because experiences like getting picked on easily happen to many individuals with ADHD. I was very jumpy, hyperactive, so my parents took care of me for a very long time. I was dependent on them because I could not control the hyper behavior. My awareness of this disability has helped me understand the people I am around and verbal social cues, to date my issue in regards to my handwriting. My coping mechanism is accepting that I have flaws in me that I have no control of, so I turn this into something useful. I am someone that can’t standstill. I move around a lot. So I engage myself in organizing events, volunteering for things that do not need much of my attention but most of moving around for production.”