Unfiltered Story #296149
I have a slight problem that many around me suspect is a mild form of dyscalculia. For me this means I have trouble reading, copying and writing large numbers. One of my recurring nightmares for example is being unable to correctly dial a number on my phone, even if it’s my ridiculously easy home phone number or even 112 (our emergency services number). Apart from that I often make mistakes in even the silliest of calculations, without realizing it and I have a different way of doing maths in general.
As this is not a well known problem, I often find there is a general lack of understanding when it comes to the problems and the solutions I found myself. Below are a couple of the situations I’ve run into.
Before the current crisis I loved to travel. I did need assistance and for that I often needed to call to arrange this. At one point, I’m calling a train company and they ask for my reservation number, which is more than 10 numbers long. The way I read these long numbers is that a. if it’s on paper I draw lines after every pair of numbers or b. if it’s on a computer I copy the number into a word document and put a few spaces after every pair. This way the numbers don’t start dancing in front of my eyes. In this case, I start reading out the number in my usual way, in pairs. After doing this for 2 pairs, the person on the other side snootily tells me that ‘they can handle more than that at once’. I immediately responded that I could not due to a disability. This was followed by a most awkward silence, after which I was allowed to continue with my reading.
When I did math in school, I used to be very meticulous. I mean I would write out every step in a calculation. This to the frustration of one particular teacher who said that I could put x, y and z in one step easily. I explained that that wouldn’t work for me, but he never understood and kept grumbling about it. It never affected my grades nor did it affect the way I did calculations, but still it feels to me like a teacher shouldn’t have done that.
The last incident is for me the most annoying. I’ve been without a job for quite a while. In fact, I never really had a job. I’ve been with this particular job coach for a while. At one point she had it in her head that I was perfect for administration. She showed me an opening at a job where I had to do parts of the financial administration. Now can anyone see the problem there? That is exactly the kind of setting my problems would be more problematic than most.