Although high school Chemistry is required for many of the top 4 year liberal arts colleges and college Chemistry is a necessary requirement for many majors and careers that many dyslexic students excel in like engineering or medicine, there is a surprising lack of resources available to students having their first encounter with chemistry  – and that may make things tricky, especially if they’re also juggling a full load of classes.

For Premium subscribers, here are a few tips and strategies for surviving and even thriving at chemistry. Chemistry can be a field that dyslexics do extremely well at because they can visualize, rotating molecules in space, and picture their interactions and energy transformations.  The main challenge is often at the beginning – when all the terminology needs to be learned and procedures involving balancing equations and understanding naming. Helpful strategies are not unlike a lot of the multisensory approaches that help with the early years with literacy. The key is learning how you learn best – then applying those tools to Chemistry. Because chemistry and chemical engineering require dyslexic MIND strengths, it’s not surprising that there are accomplished dyslexic men and women in these career disciplines, such as Dr. Cathy Drennan of MIT or Dr. Ron W. Davis of Stanford.