To follow up from my previous entry. In short yes I am.

I always thought I had a problem. Nothing major. My spelling was never great and getting my thoughts across on paper was always a problem. They were things I could live with until I started having to complete application forms at work and really struggled. It wasn’t so much the writing but getting my head around the guidance and the competency framework.

Anyway as I mentioned in the previous post on this subject I booked myself in to be tested with some financial help from my work. The test went great but we weren’t sure just what the outcome of the test was going to be. I didn’t quite fit the new definition of dyslexic but the psychologist was going to process the tests and see what came out. I was very surprised by just how split it was.

My scores on the IQ test were a surprise to say the least.

• Verbal Scale - 96 percentile
• Performance Scale - 96 percentile
• Verbal Comprehension - 99 percentile
• Perceptual Organisation - 99.9 percentile
• Working memory - 77 percentile
• Processing Speed - 5 percentile

That’s a huge gap!

The rest of the test backed that up although it’s not as bad as it actually sounds. Apparently it puts me in the Severe Dyslexia bracket but this is a measure of the discrepancy between my general ability an literacy skills. Someone might not have as large a difference but have far more problems than I do.

I’ve had very brief conversations on Twitter with @Tregenza, a fellow RPG blogger, about all this as he suffers from Dyslexia as well. Yesterday he mentioned that it must be odd to be diagnosed with Dyslexia as an adult as he found out when he was 10 years old and so has had time to learn to deal with it. I don’t really know how to answer that.

Not knowing any different means I don’t have a yard stick to base it on as it’s not as if my mind worked perfectly fine until one morning I woke up and I struggled to deal with various things. Looking back I can see where my specific problems have held me back during my education. I can see where my problems lie at work as well but to be honest I’m not sure, given the job I actually do, if there is anything that can be done to improve. I can certainly give reports and applications a major overhaul now that I can get help with them in whatever way is necessary but as my job is 99% processing payments on our accounting systems I don’t suffer that badly whilst doing the actual job.

I’ve been given an ultimatum though by my wife. Things may be changing over the next year or two. I’ll post news on that as and when it happens though as it’s that huge it might take a lot of careful planning.