Day 6 of the Feel Good Blogging Challenge

Hello again guys , please excuse this late post, it would appear i am too wise for my own mouth since another wisdom tooth has managed to make my face swell up and ,e throw up ( so classy) I curently look like half a lego head

Soo todays challenge is to post a story of vulnerability . I think this is the hardest post yet m i had to really think about this one but then I found one ! Ok so if I haven’t told you for the millionth time , I’m dyslexic … not a shock there , I think I have spoke about it in pretty much every post! I dont find being dyslexic makes me venerable , In fact quite the opposite , it makes me a stronger person … it makes me who I am. However , there was a point in university that it did make me feel venerable. My final year for my BA we had different tutors , different campus , basically it was completely different to the previous two year I had done . This didn’t really bother me , I dont mind change . Anyway we had to come up with a concept for our final major project. ( eek .. scary .. a final project to get a grade for all my hard work ,, again this did not make me feel vulnerable ) As with any project I did research , tried to explore new ideas , look at different artist and then it came to me. Why not do a project on dyslexia? I looked into and found there was very little done on the subject in the form of photography. I thought perfect , this is what I am going to do!

Now for me I had only been diagnosed for a year maybe 2 so this whole world was new to me yet I still knew very little. I thought this is the perfect opportunity to find out more about me and others who are the same.. I had briefly done some self photography that touched on dyslexia the year before and i had received really good feedback. I knew this was going to be one bad ass project….. or so I thought.


So presentation time . I had done soo much preparation, I went through all my old school reports to find any common comments that teachers had left which would have pointed to dyslexia ( I was severely dyslexic yet it wasn’t until uni anyone found out , which for me caused a massive struggle within myself as I didn’t understand what was wrong with me ). my reports were basically coloured in with highlighters for the common comments.it really made me quite upset going through it all as it brought back soo much … but again this was not my most vulnerable. got all my research ready , ideas ready.. bring on the presentation!

I had briefly gone over my idea with one of the new tutors who didn’t really get what my idea was and then the week later I was pulled out of the class and into a room with two of the other new tutors ( one of these tutors was a representative for dyslexia by the way so i thought she would maybe understand). Well lets just say I do not cry in front of people , even as a child , a dog once bit a little hole in my hand and I didn’t cry , I just walked away full of blood and was like ’ daaadddd , that dog just bit me .. look’. So clearly I’m not a cryer .

So I sit there and go through my ideas YET AGAIN and I can see in their faces what I was saying was not going in ( dyslexic people do tend to have a struggle with communicating some things , however everyone else I spoke to about it seemed to understand) After I finish they basically say I dont understand. So I tell them I want to do a series of self portraits which reflect dyslexia and how it has affected me. tell me guys do you understand the concept ? Was I talking a different language? They then went on to ask me how I planned to do that so I explained I was going to experiment and see the outcome. they then went to point out every floor in my project ( which i had spent a lot of time and gone through a lot of emotion to get to this stage) and tell me that they dont think I should do it as It doesn’t sound strong enough and that they cant imagine the imagery . Now by this point I was in tears , it was frustrating trying to tell them over and over again I can do this , I know what I’m doing , it was like going back to high school all over again !

I found out through another tutor, one who knew my capabilities and me that this other tutor ( the one who represents dyslexia) that she didn’t understand my idea and that all she can imagine me doing was taking a photo of myself with numbers and words around me . How patronising is that ? this comment made me so angry. My tutor told me she knew I could do it and that this women didn’t have a clue . So what did I do ? I stuck to my guns! I did MY project how I wanted to and I didn’t care if other people didn’t understand it because I did. ( you can find the project here if you are interested )


Thank god I did , I had soo many people come up to me at the exhibition telling me they could relate to the images and that it provoked an emotional response. I was soo proud of myself for sticking to what I knew and creating something beautiful. I was so thankful for the friends and the other tutors who supported me . and i loved seeing the face of the tutor that did not believe in me on the opening. I never heard a ‘well done , or a ’ o see what you meant ’ , nothing , but for me that was satisfaction enough.

So if you can take anything away from this story .. other than how much I waffle on .. please take away this . As long as you believe in something you do , it doesn’t matter what other people think. If it makes you happy and proud to be associated with what you have done , then to me that is a point in your life where you have been successful.


Now I’m going to go take some pain killers and pray that my face will deflate and turn into a normal Sinead shaped head , thank you for reading my ramblings

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