Unfiltered Story #246192

While another version of this story made it into the unfiltered section a while back, I wanted to submit it in a way that makes more sense. I have a moderate learning disability, specifically regarding comprehension – if something isn’t explicitly laid out in the given text, I generally can’t recognize or understand it unless it’s presented with the subtlety of an airhorn wake-up prank. As such, I excel in math and Spanish, do alright in science and in English, and absolutely flounder when it comes to history. I had trouble with my teachers refusing to accept that someone “so smart” would need help outside of the classes I was acing. But I would spend hours desperately trying to complete my history assignments, sometimes not even understanding the questions well enough to try answering. I was constantly advised that I “just need to try as hard with history as with math and Spanish,” and after having my stress and failure brushed away so many times, that’s exactly what I did: spending more time writing than thinking, and finishing in under an hour. I was deliberately sabotaging myself out of spite, and my grades remained unchanged. Sadly, I was equally unable to pass a college history class I enjoyed with a professor who was willing to help, but at least it was treated as its own problem, not held up against my other grades.