“When on stage, I have good concentration. When I don’t find something interesting, I can’t concentrate.” — Morfydd Clark Brilliant, beautiful, and brave actress Morfydd Clark is mesmerizing in Rings of Power as the Elven warrior Galadriel. “I wasn’t great in class and suffered from dyslexia and ADHD; still do. As a result I could never sit in class listening quietly, and my attention would inevitably end up wandering after a short while.” — Morfydd Clark Morfydd had long been a fan of Lord of the Rings because her father had read The Hobbit to her and she had listened to Lord of the Rings on audiobooks. She has said that she felt that her bilingual background helped her relate to Galadriel because Galadriel would think […]
Dyslexic Advantages in Electrical Engineering [Premium]
A TALE OF TWO STORIES “At the beginning I can remember looking at blackboards or pages of text having no idea what other kids around me were seeing. For me the pages may have well as been blank for all I could glean from them. However I was lucky as when I started my secondary school my teacher spotted that I was having problems. I was tested for dyslexia and found to have a mild form… By the time I left I had poor grades and was told I would not amount to much…” Same person: “I became interested in geeky stuff when I was less than ten years old. I remember being given a toy wind up clock that you could open the back […]
Co-founder Brett Kopf’s Journey to Success with Remind and Omella
"...Can I just start off by making a blanket statement that I think dyslexia can be such a gift?" — Brett Kopf Brett Kopf is co-founder of Remind and Omella, two companies that grew out of his interest in solving problems that mission-driven organizations and...
Actor Stephen Graham [Premium]
Actor Stephen Graham has been described as one of the most talented actors the United Kingdom has ever seen. Yet, he almost didn’t get a chance at his breakthrough role in Snatch when the director Guy Ritchie, asked whether he had come to read for the part. Stephen had just come along to support his friend who was trying to get the job, but when Guy found out that he was also an actor, he encouraged him to give it a try. Stephen told him that because he was dyslexic, he couldn’t do a cold read. I don’t know whether he knew that Guy Ritchie is also dyslexic – but fortunately for Stephen, Guy asked him to improvise the scene instead and he completely smashed […]
Manuel Garcia-Rulfo in Netflix’s Lincoln Lawyer
"We were shooting and I said: ‘I can not do this’. I was going to quit.” — Manuel Garcia-Rulfo Manuel Garcia-Rulfo had big shoes to fill - following on Matthew McConaughey's Mickey Haller in Netflix's remake of The Lincoln Lawyer. English is a second language...
Comforts of the Abyss: New Book from Philip Schultz
"Schultz, founder and director of The Writers Studio, chronicles the challenges he faced as a poet, fiction writer, and teacher that led him to see the aesthetic and psychological value of creating a writing persona. He has long confronted a pervasive inner critic...
Dyslexia and Farming: Matt Baker [Premium]
“If somebody asked me if I could live my life again without dyslexia, I would say no, because you recognise things and you do things differently to the way everybody else does, and that gets you to the front of the queue. You see things which are very obvious to you. I’m very practical and visual – that’s what I’m drawn to. And you find ways around challenges and it gives you a different perspective on life.” — Matt Baker of Our Farm in the Dales In the United Kingdom, research has suggested that one in ten people are dyslexic, but besides being over-represented in schools of engineering and art design, dyslexia is also found more commonly in agricultural students (one in five). […]
Henry Winkler: Find the Very Best for You
“There is an emotional component to the learning challenged,” says Winkler, whose parents called him “dumb dog” for his failures. “You don’t have a sense of self because you’re not keeping up with everybody... you feel terrible about yourself.” — Henry Winkler ...
Rogue Hero: Mastermind of the Special Air Service, David Stirling [Premium]
“The boy Stirling is quite mad, quite, quite mad. However, in a war there is often a place for mad people.” — General Bernard Montgomery A recent documentary on the founding of the British Special Air Service mentioned that the unconventional mastermind was, in fact, dyslexic. David Stirling has a very non-linear and unpredictable start to his adult life. He started at Cambridge, but was thrown out in his first year because of a variety of poor performances and vices including gambling. He tried to make his way as an architect, then artist, then became interested in the possibility of becoming a mountaineer and reservist in the Scots Guards. David was in America working as a cowboy when the World War II began. He […]
Novelist Natasha Solomons
"Books are my refuge, but I had to overcome dyslexia to write the stories I was bursting to tell." — Natasha Solomons Natasha is a lifelong storyteller, but it took a lot of persistence and resilience to get those stories out. As a child, she listened to...
The Voice Inside Your Head [Premium]
“When I was eight years old, a school psychologist gave me a bit of advice about my brain. He said I may have a form of brain damage, and he wanted to send me to a special class. I was a classic dyslexic: I wasn’t born with a good memory, and I couldn’t concentrate; reading and writing were always a challenge for me. Throughout my school career, I learned by having my mother and friends read the syllabus to me; I forced myself to memorize it and what I didn’t get, which was most of it, I just didn’t get. I had no future because I just couldn’t grasp what was being taught to me. In twelve years of school, I couldn’t read a book […]
From High School Drop-Out to VP of Engineering [Premium]
There are some people who are so insightful into their cognitive processes that talking to them is pure gold. Gary MacGregor is one of those people – he’s a VP of an electronic device company and recent PhD recipient from the University of Texas at Austin. He has a remarkable story and has been very generous in sharing what he has learned. Gary: “I’m a high school dropout. My parents were high school dropouts. I’m the first male in the family to go to college.” When Gary dropped out of school, he took a job working an oil refinery – a lucrative career for a person without a high school diploma. While he was working 12 hour shifts 84 hours a week, he would exercise […]