Dyslexia Profile: Melanie Weldon [VIDEO]

Video by Fairuz Ferrer

Written by Savannah Rake

“So last night I got a pizza for my friend, and I gave the [delivery] lady a tip,” said Melanie Weldon. “I gave her a five dollar tip, and I couldn’t do the addition really quick. So I just scribbled in some illegible number for the total. But I made sure that she knew that she got a five dollar tip. I just couldn’t do it.”

Melanie Weldon is a second-year visual affects major from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Because of the way her brain works, she struggles with adding “numbers like five plus six,” and uses her fingers to come up with the total.

In kindergarten, her teacher gave a spelling test. She was asked to spell the word ‘bed.’ Students in Weldon’s class learned the word easily, but she couldn’t grasp the concept. B-e-d. Words like, ‘cat,’ and ‘dog,’ are interchangeable with her experience with the word ‘bed.’ These simplistic words are a staple to the early development of vocabulary and reading, but because of Weldon’s dyslexia, even they were challenging for her.

“Just look at the word like it’s a bed, like it creates a bed,” she said.

Those were the words of advice her kindergarten teacher gave her. Using this advice, Weldon said she began to cope with her disorder, even when it hadn’t yet been diagnosed. She began associating words with shapes.

“I got diagnosed officially sophomore year of high school,” she said. “So I was just going through middle school and high school thinking that I was normal, that I was just having trouble.”

Weldon suffered throughout middle school, dealing with depression. She said it was especially awful when reading out loud. She came up with a system in which she would go home and read and re-read the chapters she would have to say aloud in class. She memorized the pages, remembering the gist of every line, so she could distract her classmates from the fact that she wasn’t really reading.

“I think it’s affected my life socially the worst,” said Weldon. She became introverted; she doesn’t speak loudly, her handwriting is scribbled. She developed sensitivity toward other people’s opinions of her, not speaking up because she didn’t want them to think she was stupid.

Weldon’s middle school teachers didn’t know what was going on. She said they didn’t know she was dyslexic and thought she was slacking off.

“On every single one of my report cards it said, ‘If only you would just work a little bit harder,’” she said. “I’m getting headaches from working all of this time, and they’re like, ‘work harder’?”

Weldon’s mother, who helped her study for her spelling tests, felt like she knew about the dyslexia when her daughter was finally diagnosed. According to Weldon, those around her who hadn’t seen her struggle in the same way her mother did were shocked. Her grades weren’t poor and she had developed “coping skills without even knowing it.”

“Art, just in general, has helped me a lot,” said Weldon. “Like I said, my kindergarten teacher said to picture the word ‘bed’ as a bed. So now, first I look at the word as a shape … I’ve gotten by.”

According to dosomething.org, one out of every five people have a similar experience to Weldon. Dyslexia, the most common learning disability, affects the phonologic module in the brain. This is the area that interprets words into sounds and differentiates left from right.

“I think that the most common misconception is that people with dyslexia are more stupid — they just have a lower brain quality, I guess — than everybody else,” said Weldon. “I think that’s actually the opposite. Because we’ve taken this kind of disability … and we can do everything else that normal people can do.”

Weldon touched on one of the most pressing issues when dealing with conceptions about dyslexia: people with Dyslexia are commonly ‘gifted,’ according to The International Dyslexia Association, with higher levels creativity and intelligence than those without.

“I think the biggest thing for people who are dyslexic,” said Weldon, “is to know that it’s okay to take some time and really figure out what you want to say before you say it so you can have your complete thought.”