Picture this: a glass-walled room in the middle of a school quad, where every passing student can gawk at you like an exotic species at the zoo. Welcome to my middle school testing center, or as I call it, “The Fishbowl of Academic Shame.” Nothing says “blend in with your peers” quite like being marched to a transparent box every time there’s a quiz. I might as well have worn a neon sign that read, “Look! A kid who can’t read!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning, back when my biggest academic achievement was successfully repeating kindergarten.

The Plot Twist Nobody Ordered

Most kids worry about monsters under the bed. I worried about letters on the page and whether the right words would come out of my mouth. While my classmates were mastering the alphabet, I was locked in an epic battle with the letter ‘b,’ which seemed determined to disguise itself as ‘d’ at every opportunity.  Ever-present was the fear of saying any word with ‘th’ in it due to my impediment.  Good thing this sound is only made about every 10 English words.

By second grade, the adults had a name for my struggles: dyslexia, with a side order of speech impediment. For my parents, this diagnosis was relief wrapped in an acronym—finally, an explanation and a path to help. For me? It was the beginning of my career as a professional “special case.”

The state of Virginia slapped me with an LD label faster than you could say “Individual Education Plan.” This magical label was supposed to be my golden ticket to academic support. What they forgot to mention was it also came with daily humiliation.

Smart Kid, Stupid System

Here’s the thing nobody seemed to grasp: I wasn’t stupid. I was just operating with different software. While everyone else had the standard academic operating system, I was running some experimental beta version.

I loved learning and was curious about everything. I just did it in ways that made teachers nervous. Traditional methods bounced off me like rubber balls off a brick wall. Reading aloud? Nope. Telling time? Not a chance. Test taking? Hard pass.

So I was assigned a personal academic aide and became a regular at the special testing facility. Mrs. Penny, a patient woman with a warm smile, became my educational fairy godmother for seven years of extra sessions. I was truly grateful for all the before-and-after-school support she gave me. Elementary school was manageable, but middle school?

That’s where things became serious with grades and the new development of peer pressure and social status.

Welcome to the Academic Hunger Games

Middle school is already a Colosseum of hormones and awkwardness, but add a glass-walled testing room and you’ve got psychological warfare. Every time I got pulled out for a test, it was like a public announcement: “Attention students, watch the learning-disabled girl walk to the shame cube!”

The bullying was relentless. I was smart enough to know I didn’t need this special attention, but I was also too “different” for the regular kids. My grades tanked while teachers started telling me that college probably wasn’t in the cards.

“College isn’t for everyone.” They said. “You’ll never make it past high school, and should look into trade schools” was specially stated after standardized testing.

I wanted to respond with “Watch me,” but thanks to that speech impediment, it came out more like “Wath me.” The irony wasn’t lost on me.

The Great Escape

By eighth grade, I’d had enough. I was facing high school with my LD label trailing behind me like toilet paper stuck to my shoe. Mrs. Penny and I hatched a plan: I was going to study my way out of the learning disability designation.

I became a literary masochist, spending my allowance on the most challenging books I could find. Austen, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Woolf, Wilde—if it made English majors cry, I bought it.

My strategy was beautifully simple: if I couldn’t read, I’d force myself to read the hardest stuff possible. I’d tackle these books line by line until I could get through a page, then a chapter, then the whole book. I became obsessed with buying books I couldn’t read.

The Ultimate Test

The day of reckoning: an all-day exam in Richmond to ditch the LD label. My parents thought I was making a colossal mistake, worrying that high school without official support would be impossible.

But I took that test anyway. And I passed.

I was officially going into high school as a regular kid. No labels, no glass fishbowl. Just me, my scrambled brain, and whatever literary superpowers I’d absorbed.

The Victory Lap That Felt Like a Marathon

High school without the safety net was brutal. I failed multiple classes and became a summer school regular. I graduated with a 2.7 GPA and was rejected by almost every college. Finally, Radford University took a chance on me.

But here’s where the story gets good.

College was like finding out I’d been playing life on expert mode. I wasn’t the broken kid anymore—just another student figuring things out. I worked like my life depended on it, because it did. Every assignment was proof the naysayers were wrong.

I graduated with honors and a 3.8 GPA.

Take that, middle school guidance counselor.

The Superpower Reveal

Looking back, my dyslexia wasn’t the villain—it was my origin story. All those years of struggling and adapting turned me into an academic MacGyver. I could solve problems with determination and creative thinking that came from navigating a system not designed for brains like mine.

My work ethic was forged in academic adversity. My resilience came from years of being told “no” and finding ways to make it “yes” anyway. Dyslexia gave me a different lens to see the world. While others followed well-marked paths, I was creating my own trails.

The Moral of the Story

Never let anyone tell you that you won’t make it because of a disability or a label. The world is bigger than academics and wider than narrow definitions of success. Success isn’t about fitting into someone else’s mold—it’s about breaking the mold and creating something beautiful from the pieces.

Different doesn’t mean less than. It means exactly what it means: different. And different can be absolutely extraordinary.

Besides, in a world full of spell-check and voice-to-text, who really needs to be able to spell anyway? 😉

This guest reflection was written by Erin Kelsh. You can learn more about Erin in her bio below:

Erin Kelsh is Vice President of Messaging Solutions & Innovation at Merkle, where she has spent nine years driving cutting-edge solutions in the CRM and messaging space. With over 15 years of experience in owned media channel marketing, she specializes in email, SMS, push notifications, and emerging messaging technologies across all major platforms, including but not limited to Adobe, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Braze.

As a member of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud Advisory Board, Erin helps shape the future of marketing technology while focusing on developing innovative solutions that meet clients’ evolving needs. Her expertise spans implementation, AI and agentic experiences, and technology optimization. Her team has earned multiple industry recognitions this year, including Innovation and Client Success award from Movable Ink and Services Partner of the Year from Braze.

Originally from Virginia, Erin now lives in Denver, Colorado, and is passionate about hiking, pottery, travel, music and spending time with her two rescue pups.