What is your experience of studying at university with dyslexia?

[benbt]

I personally find it difficult keeping up with the amount of reading. The writing process is slow for me. I feel overwhelmed by the number of potential sources and deciding what to focus on. What have you struggled with and have you found anything particularly helpful?

[ClareLou]

Hi I was in uni a long time ago so things will have changed but One of the things I did was to do a mind map of my assignment.

I would do this by splitting the map into introduction and main body... and then splitting this down into the things that need to be there so introduction might have key stats, definitions etc main body would have the models I was comparing and this would be broke down into for that moddle and against.

From this I would colour code all the parts and then when am reading a journal or book I would colour code the info to the colours on the map.

I would then follow the map to write up my assignment and then find all the bits for that colour and write around those bits of information.

I would then move onto the next colour and carry on untill I have written parts about all the colours.

The main thing is to really narrow down what the question covers and stick to it our dyslexic minds love to cover a lot of ground as we love thinking in the big picture but for exams etc the ask from your tutor will be about that question and that question. I found by sticking to the colours it helped me focus on one part of the task at a time.

The other thing that may help is if your reading electronic sources is text to speech software or if your reading from paper a c-pen reader. Your university should be able to help you access this type of equipment abs you can also apply for the disability student grant.

Good luck with your studies, as soon as you find a system that works for you it will feel so much better,

Take care,

Clare

[benbt in reply to ClareLou]

Thanks Clare for your detailed answer

[Cupcake1617]

Hey I found digital books through the uni library really useful. You can search for certain words and I would read that section - which sped things up a lot for me. I brought a few books and highlighted, scribbled over and covered in post it notes.

I applied for DSA and got some equipment and a tutor which helped too.