Looking Back, Moving Forward: Insights Gained as a College Student With Childhood Trauma and a Learning Disability

As I start my second quarter this year after finishing the first quarter with straight A’s and a solid study system under my belt, I’ve been reflecting on how many things I thought I knew about being a student were incorrect.

For example, as I lie here having a hard time sleeping due to a financial aid mishap that I’ll have to deal with in the morning, I’m watching this Canadian Disney Channel show called Life with Derek. I used to watch it as a teenager, and there’s this episode called “Grade Point Average.” One of the main characters is the kind of person who goes after every point of her grade, even after achieving a high score like 99%.

For a moment, I found myself wishing I had been that kind of high school student—maybe not the type to argue over every point, but at least someone who cared enough to open textbooks. Then I had to remind myself of my childhood reality.

The truth is, I didn’t have the right environment as a student to ever care about my textbooks or assignments. How could I care about these things when there was violence in the home? When there wasn’t enough food to stop my stomach from rumbling?

I must add before continuing that I did end up graduating high school with some life challenges and made up my junior year during my senior year of high school in order to walk with my class.

Sometimes I forget that having the right environment can make all the difference in how a student or a child approaches their education. I have a hard time extending grace to myself in this regard.

Earlier today, I had a major breakthrough in a conversation about how you’re not supposed to remember every single thing from every single class. When teachers say they want you to apply what you are learning, they mean within the context of the class, such as your exams and assignments—not your entire life.

You’re not expected to forever remember every single detail from your classes. This is why you often see doctors and other professionals referring back to textbooks and the internet whilst working in their respective fields. Your brain isn’t meant to hold everything; the goal is to understand the concepts and the field itself. Classes build on each other to expose you to these concepts so you know enough to be part of the field.

I got to the root cause of why I believed I was always supposed to remember every single detail. If I didn’t, it meant something was wrong with me. This misguided belief stemmed from growing up in a household where I was verbally beaten down for not being perfect and for making mistakes.

This led me to put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself as an adult in many areas of my life, for example, as a college student, tasks that should have taken only 16 minutes would take me much longer, not just because of my dyslexia, but because I thought I had to get everything right the first time or the second time around.

It wasn’t until this last quarter that I began to see how I would put ungodly amounts of pressure on myself, only for it to be unnecessary. Again, a lot of my educational trauma stems from childhood. As a non-traditional student now, older in years, I am more self-aware and more self-taught. Therefore, I am able to see things differently now—not always easily, but I get there.

It’s interesting how, as you grow as a student, you begin to peel back layers of the student you once were, the student you could have been, the student you are becoming, and the student you will be.

Another example is that when things were easier for me in school, teachers often didn’t believe me. If I finished the book before everyone else, they didn’t believe I’d read the whole thing and would make me read it again. It never helped that teachers would second-guess my ability to read fast, even though by 8th grade I had reached college-level material.

In my early years, I had tested for an above-average processing speed, which only means I can finish tasks faster than the average person—not that I am smarter or don’t ever struggle.

It also never helped when I would get all A’s on a report card, people at home would say it was only because the teachers felt bad for me, so they gave me the grades. I eventually began to think from their perspective—that teachers felt bad for me. After all, I did have a learning disability. it was never properly diagnosed; it wasn’t until recently, when someone close to me had it, that I finally had a name for it.

As children, we might not believe these things, but over time they stick to us, and we don’t realize it until we’re reacting from these places subconsciously.

For example, I recently passed my statistics class with a 103%, and it was one of the easiest classes I’ve ever taken personally, despite how everyone else said it was one of the hardest. I wasn’t struggling and I found each session intriguing; yet with each session I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, spoiler, it never did.

My statistics professor towards the end encouraged me to become a tutor and said would she would give me a recommendation – I didn’t take her up on the offer as I have a lot on my plate already.

However, even with the grades I would get, 90-100s, I still doubted my abilities or would be shocked when I managed to get 100% on all chapter quizzes besides the first two which both got 90%.

I achieved a 98% on my midterm and 94% on my final – the latter surprised me because at that point I was burnt out, tired, and my brain was fried.

Decoding the Numbers: How I Conquered My Statistics Midterm with 98%

There were times when the concepts got a little confusing, and my dyslexia got in the way, but I never felt like I couldn’t do it. That alone taught me that trusting my instincts will help me go far.

I knew that if I just stuck to a system and put the time in, the class would be easier for me because a lot of it was intuitive. I found excitement in some of the concepts, such as rejecting the null hypothesis or failing to reject it depending on the p-value being less than 0.05 or greater than.

As I go into my human biology class, I’m already excited. Although people have said it’s a hard one and a lot to handle, I’m learning to trust my instincts and stick to my system. It looks like it’s going to be a fun class, and I’m excited to see how well I do in it.

I’m sure there will be hard times, but I definitely don’t think it will be the kind of class that makes me want to throw my computer, as some students say.

Relearning what being a student means to me and what is expected of me has been the most liberating thing as a college student this year. I’m extremely grateful for the chance to be a student again, to be the student I could have been if I had grown up in the right environment.

Now, if only this financial aid mishap of delayed tuition funds, which has me awake at 3:11 in the morning writing this blog post because I can’t sleep, gets taken care of, I can be a bit more excited and relaxed for the start of my first-ever summer quarter.

I’ll be calling first thing in the morning to get it resolved—after all, classes start first thing in the morning – wish me luck and I hope to write on here again soon!