SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello, um this is another one of our fireside conversations that I'm having with people in academia who identify as being in some way neurodiverse. My aim is to hear their personal experiences and hear what their journey's been. This being the case, the terminology or the wording will be theirs and based on their experience and will be describing their own personal journeys. They may not be the terminology or expressions used by those of us listening, but that's not important. What is important is we hear the authentic voices in a way that the speaker feels comfortable. I want us all to learn from their life experiences in their own voices. Hello. Um Thank you for joining us, David. Um, could you start off if you could tell us a little bit about yourself?

David’s Path: Academia And Scouting

SPEAKER_02 0:49

All right. Um, I am currently a professor of bioscience education at Sheffield Hallam, which I've been, well, I've been doing that for a couple of years, but I've been an academic like forever. Went to university when I was 18, never really left. So I've been there for a long time. Um steeped in academia. I do all kinds of stuff outside of academia. I uh I scout a lot, I walk a lot, I climb a lot, and then um my life at university is teaching and research. Um so I do a lot of teaching, a lot of biochemistry related stuff. Good stuff, uh teaching development.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Excellent. Um, so scouting. Yeah. That's that's that's good stuff. So how long have you been doing that for?

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Uh I'm coming up to well, I did it since I was I was uh eight when I started, had a break in the middle, but I've been leading my group for nearly 10 years now.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Wow, it's good stuff. It's uh it's a great organization.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

It is, it is. You get all the kids coming through their eights, it's really open and welcoming. Um, for relevant to your podcast, um, we have a whole range of neurodiverse in there who just feel really comfortable and can be themselves and do cool things.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Yeah, yeah, they kind of um yeah. So you kind of see people from right, from young ages right the way through in terms of um neurodiverse development and understanding. Six to twenty four. Yeah, that's pretty pretty big range. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Yeah, yeah, huge.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

And then colleagues as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Oh, yeah, them as well. So some of some of those have been there since the the the day the dinosaurs walked the earth, and uh the others have just appeared last week.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

That's the truth. That's the truth. I should say that um both David and I are recovering from the the latest um virus, so if we cough, we apologize as we go through. Um, so how would you describe yourself in terms of your new neurodiversity?

SPEAKER_02 2:47

Uh massively dyslexic are the words I use.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Okay, massively, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Massively dyslexic, yeah. Okay, uh carry on. Yeah, so yeah, massively dyslexic. So it's um everybody's um when you speak to different dyslexics, it all manifests in slightly different ways. So some people talk about the letters jingle jangling all over the screen. Um, mine's might like a pattern recognition problem, which is pretty pretty um odd considering I do lots of coding and uh work with new hot large numerical data sets, but uh not being able um once I get it past about four, three or four digits or numers or characters, um it just turns to fluff within my mind. And um, I have I have a tendency to uh read the word that I wish was on the page rather than the word that was actually on the page.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, yeah, that sounds so familiar. Yeah, you kind of it's almost like it's innate predictive text.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Oh, that's fantastic. I can I can this you give me a sentence, I can tell you exactly what you where whatever you want it to be.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yes, you write something and I'll tell you what I think it should be.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Exactly, yeah. So yeah, so that that could be comes, it manifests like that an awful lot. Uh manifests in a way that you can you have big blocks of text I just can't get into. You know, if if there's a block of text in a book or a screen, it just it uh my niece described it as matrixing where little um coloured sort of patterns would move between the letters and things, and it just makes you feel a bit so you can't look at text.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Yeah, which is there. So um I've got several paths I want to go, and I don't know which way to go. Um, okay, so the kind of difference in the manifestations of new diversity is something I'm trying to get across through these podcasts. If um there's a lot of stereotypes um which are associated. Um with ADHD, it's um it's the one of the better phrase, the naughty boy in the classroom who can't sit still and gets into trouble. And autism, it's kind of the rain man thing. But in terms of dyslexia, what would you say was kind of the biggest stereotype?

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Um, it's that you I think my teacher put it nicely, um, in a really nasty way. So probably falls into one of the questions later on, says a really nice boy won't amount to very much. You're just not clever. Yeah, because you can't uh you can't articulate within the within that uh written version. Yeah, not that you can't, I mean you can articulate, you can articulate very well, but the uh ability to write quickly, or you know, you get your maths wrong just because you get the numbers back to front. It doesn't mean you don't know the answer, you know exactly what the answer is, it's just you didn't write the answer down properly.

Early Diagnosis And Support In The 80s

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, it's um yeah, this is this is this is strange because it's ringing so many bells for me. And I've been talking to people with other neodiversities where it's kind of been exploring things. I'm trying not to put myself into this too much. So um, so in terms of diagnosis, have you got a formal diagnosis?

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Yeah, I've had that ages ago. So I was lucky, um, I was lucky and unlucky. I was unlucky in that teachers in my primary school just basically said, nah, he's not he's not clever, um tough. But my um my dad was a secondary school teacher, he was a chemistry teacher at the time, and he recognised what was going on, and so he um this is in the 80s, yeah. That was a long time ago, so um me off to the dyslexia institute that at the time had a branch in um Darlington, which is close to where I lived at the time, and I got a formal diagnosis at that point. Okay, so I got a formal diagnosis since just before secondary school, which for for the the time at the time the time period was un unusual, which then sort of spoke to that even more because you're like, they really are this weird little dyslexic boy.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Because uh it wasn't something that was that's quite early in the diag in the dyslexic diagnosis story, isn't it? Because I think it was first before the benefit discovered in 1970, I think it was, and um it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

So that would have been it would only have been mid-80s.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

So how did that make you feel at the time? Um different.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yeah. Um like uh I had to because because of the diagnosis, I ended up going to special classes, which was um special classes, yeah. Special classes. I mean they were really helpful special classes, but nobody likes to being singled out in primary school to go to a special class.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, yeah. My diagnosis was when I was about 48. So it's a different kind of story, really, in terms of the far end of the spectra.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

So did you feel um did you find it useful at the time or um I think it was useful because if it hadn't been diagnosed, I wouldn't have got the support that then got me through. So, you know, the special classes that even though you got singled out and you then you got uh picked on and bullied on because you were the little kid going to silly special classes, also then meant that um you showed I got shown how to read in a way that I could manage. I used to have um I used to have this little uh rocket with a a slot cut out in the middle that I could fly across the words because then that would block out all that big block of text that said I couldn't see.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Intimidating.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

And um I remember getting this actually probably leads into why I do the things I do. Well, it does. I wrote about this in in other things.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Um I got access to things like phonetic dictionaries.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Oh, okay.

Tech As A Lifeline For Learning

SPEAKER_02 8:59

So you you you don't look them up alphabetically, you look them up by syllables and phonetics, and then there's your words, it's got a little description about what it is. So they were they were all the rage uh late 80s and 90s, and then equally um toward through six form, I again I I lucked out because um my parent, my dad was part of the Computers Inter Schools initiative for the uh the Northeast of England, so I I got access to a BBC Micro from day one, which then also had the other all the programs on it. So I was using um word processors in well, I went to university in 99, I got the first word processor access to one of those about 92 with spell checkers on them. So I've been using digital tech to work with all of this for forever. And then so my interest in digital tech and using digital tech in education all stems from that. I've been using digital tech to support my own education since I was like 10.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Okay, that's really that's really interesting because um you kind of you've followed the evolution of digital support and dyslexia.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Yeah, probably a nice case study just for somebody to go, what was it like from the from the first point that from the point that computers were used in education to today?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

It's I've used every variant of it.

Disclosure At University And Exam Accommodations

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Which is kind of um just thing I want to to to investigate. Um terms of university life, did you um did you and apparently this is a word you're not supposed to use anymore, but I quite like it because disclose is seen as being a negative thing, but for me that's what I do every time I tell someone, so I I endorse it. So apologies if it's not your word, but um did you at university tell people?

SPEAKER_02 10:49

Yeah, so there was um I went to Warwick and there was a and I for the for my my downside, I keep forgetting her name. But a really, really good academic there called I think she called Liz. Somebody who's an immunologist. And uh they we told Warwick what was going on and they sorted out a laptop for me to to work on, and um she acted like she was she must have been the the School of Biosciences disability tutor or whatever the um the wording was in '95. I don't think it was that. But yeah, we we talked about it there, which meant I got all the dispensations. Okay. Um my my favorite dispensation, if we if we we're gonna do favorite dispensations, right? So I used to have to sit my exams um by myself. Right. Speak and and have the extra time. Now, the but the reason I sat them by myself was the best reason, was because in order for me to be able to hear what I'm writing, I have to speak it out.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

So in order for me not to give the answers away to everybody else, they put me in a room by myself.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Okay. That's um so that's um so that you you you kind of got dispensation back then. Because my my perception would be that it's a relatively recent thing, but it's no, no.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

I I had extra I had the extra time, I had the room by myself, um in sole individuators, that was all the way from um GCSEs onwards. That was so GCSEs would have been uh 88. Okay. So yeah. Um I sat some of my exams in the headmaster's office. Yeah, even that one of my exam in a broom cupboard because I ran out of space.

Meetings, Anxiety, And Reading Strategies

SPEAKER_00 12:50

That's um not healthy. Yeah, but it but but true, but true, yes, yeah, different times. Um but um yeah, it's it's it's fascinating for this because um because I didn't get diagnosis, the school knew and mum knew, and they discussed it, and they I was kind of supported on the down low. Yeah and then um so uh by the time I got to university, yeah, I just went into the wide world and just didn't realise these things existed, really. So it's it's really fascinating to hear this. Um okay, so you in terms of um meetings now and the like, what what's your what what kind of mechanisms do you have in place to to cope with things? Because you kind of if you're in a meeting and someone tables a piece of paper for the first time and you kind of got this massive writing in front of you, what what's what would be your process?

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Oh, well, in within a meeting, if a if a document appears within a meeting, I'm I'm now at the I'm happily I'm now at the stage of life I could be grumpy about this kind of stuff. So if a if a if a paper is tabled within a meeting without the paper being pre-given to the meeting, I simply say I'm not gonna read this.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Because it's uh it's you should have said this ahead of time. Now that's only something you can do once you're a uh 50-something professor with I'm fully embracing that myself. Yeah, what do you think this is? Summarize it, P. Um so yeah, but prior to that, um I learned to scan read really quick.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

But scan surface read and just be able to find out and put um just look for keywords. So synthesizing information, it's not dyslexia is not about the ability not to synthesize information. You're very good at synthesizing information, very good at synthesizing large, desperate and disconnected pieces of synthesis information. Actually, dyslexics are really good at that, yeah, because they see patterns where they don't exist or patterns where they could exist.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

So you scan your document quickly, just pull out a couple of keywords, you're like, right, I've got the gist of this, let's go. Um and but if a deep reading of a document, I just I wouldn't have the time to do it, I just couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah. Did you um did you ever get anxious about it? I used to. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's something I kind of you say, kind of as you get reach a certain age, you get feel able to throw things back and say no. Yeah, say that this is this isn't what I'm gonna do. But when I was younger, I used to suffer and I didn't tell it such at the time, but a bit of anxiety over it. If a piece of paper came on the table, I just and the more anxious you get, the less able you are to see the letters.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Yeah. And it's it's a lot easier to say it in um in retrospect, but you know, if it so we often go to I go to this uh I go to these meetings called the Academic Board, which is highly exciting um environment, and they have meeting booklets that are about 150, 160 pages in length.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

And then you suddenly realize actually, you don't need to read it all.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

You need to read the agenda, work out what it is you're likely to be able to contribute to, then read that bit.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

And the rest of it and and find key bits which you can ask a question about, which forces people around the table to explain the rest to you.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Correct. Always have a question.

Anecdotes: Bias, Typos, And Humour

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Yeah, yeah. Okay, talking of questions, back to my questions. Um, have you have you got an anecdote or either positive or negative that you could share with us which kind of demonstrates how you live in your life?

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Oh, well, I've got a read this in your in your question show when you said I've got loads of anecdotes, both positive and negative. So I've got little lots of little stories. Um negative ones that are always but they're quite funny in that sort of funny, tragic way.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

So I um we like papers.

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Yeah, I wrote some massive grants and then uh got the uh got the commentary back from the reviewers, and uh one of the reviewers wrote back and said, This is a good science, however, the uh grant would benefit from being read by a native English speaker. Oh and I was just like, Wow, thanks, thanks for that. I mean I know uh I know the northeast of England is not necessarily always classified as uh native English speakers, but come on, guys, that's uh that's uh that's a thing. So so that would that was one of them. Um I had another one.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

We uh these things stick in your mind as well.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Oh yeah. Then in the in the good old days of um sit-down exams when we had to write all the we wrote all the exams and at the beginning, somebody the uh the chief and vigilator would always come across, please can everybody turn to question 37 and correct the and so I was standing there with um my then line manager, and that that announcement came round and he went, Aha, it's you again, isn't it? Because it was always me that there's always typos in it, and I was like, Oh, it's probably me again, and it wasn't, it was his exam, and I was like, It's not just me that makes typos, it's everybody else. Yeah, so that's that's uh that's thing. My um my good right, my good friend and writing colleagues um call me the auto-incorrect. So they send me fully proof documents to read over, which I then make worse and send them back. Yeah, so there's yeah, there's that that kind of uh shenanigans. But it's yeah, it's all it's all about uh well, most of the story is about when I've just um it looks like I've been lazy, but I've tried really, really hard.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

And actually, I just that's the word that sticks to me from school is lazy, lazy and careless. Lazy and not lazy. I've spent hours working on it and going through it and checking it a thousand times, and probably ten times longer than any other kid in the school, but I was the lazy and careless one because there were mistakes which shouldn't be there.

Speech Vs Writing And Word-Finding

SPEAKER_02 19:18

I actually, when I was writing my PhD thesis, um, at the advice of my uh then my supervisor, I had I removed the word dose from the uh autocorrect in on Word because nowhere in my entire thesis did I wrote dose, but I wrote does. Yeah, and I just I just kept getting it wrong. She was just like, just delete dose. So I deleted dose. So I don't have dose in my autocorrect anymore because I don't use the word.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Good coping strategy.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Yeah, just get rid of the words you don't need.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Delete them until they come up, and then it was resoundingly wrong.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Well, you're gonna be wrong about something, so at least. know what a topic is.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yes, that's true. That's true. And as I say to the kids when I text them, so long as you get the gist, that's what matters. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so kind of it's this kind of building on the idea that um what you mentioned before is that not everyone's the same and that we have kind of labels which kind of put us in categories. Can you describe a way that um this actually affects you in your day-to-day life which people wouldn't necessarily anticipate um it's the difference between communicating orally and communicating writtenly written in the written format.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

So like loads and loads of times I've got I'm actually better read than you probably would imagine a dyslexia a dyslexic person to be I actually think dyslexic read quite a lot.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Okay can we just just a question would you describe yourself as dyslexia? Would you describe yourself as dyslexic or someone with dyslexia dyslexic?

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah me too yeah anyway sorry yeah so um often I know I if I was speaking my my lexicon is my oral lexicon is much much wider than my written lexicon and so I'm trying to write trying to type something down and I I just can't get the word yeah no matter how much I try and I know exactly which word I want to use and it's a really good word in the sentence and it makes it sound really like a I just can't get it I just oh whatever and then just go back to some really boring four letter word that I can spell quickly.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

Yeah.

Curiosity About Brain Wiring And Benefits

Superpowers: 3D Thinking And Pattern Spotting

SPEAKER_02 21:45

And so or I have to um I want to keep Google open because Google's really good at um context dependent spell checking so you do a Google search for the word you go oh that's the word I mean and then have to go and type it in. Yeah it's um so yeah so my the written stuff in messages is always quite bullet point not bullet pointy but shortened yeah but the the the the talking version the oral version is much more uh broader yeah and uh again test myself into this I kind of um I find dictation I can't quite verbose in a right piece of writing if I'm dictating whereas if I'm typing it's kind of to the point. Yeah yeah okay um what what would you like to better understand about this dyslexia I've always been fascinated about like how the human mind actually works and processes information the physiological side of it yeah when how does the the the neurological and physiological side of it so where's the where's the wiring pattern different between individuals that means that processing is different yeah and I was careful not to use the word broken because it's not broken it's wired in a different way connected it's differently connected so and there's a and for something of that prevalence you know dyslexia is a lot of people in it so it is there's a different part and that means that means things that are that prevalent are either beneficial or gone yeah so why what is it what what in the big scheme of things why why is it persisted within society within a within the population what's the benefit what's the fundamental beneficialness of it all that means it persists yeah and I'd be really interested to know what you know I I've got I've got some good clues you know stuff about um 3D conceptualization the ability to picture the ability to project um you know the ability to see things in three dimensions yeah is that's all they're all hardwired into the same manifestation but I'd like to know a lot more about that yeah um how how do you feel it's kind of quite prevalent particularly in um made by dyslexia the the the kind of organization for school kids is the concept of superpowers yeah are you kind of on board with that or yeah absolutely I um so I I uh I think one of the reasons I do the type of academia idea which I didn't mention at the start I'm a structural biologist yeah by training and so for people who are you're listening don't know what structural biology is when you look at molecules in three dimensions and try and work out what they all do um I can do that in my head yeah it's all this there already just there just like oh yeah that's what it looks like fine can do all of that um and then you know I said the other thing I like um I like hill walking and and walking stuff I can just look at a map picture what the terrain looks like in three dimensions go well we'd have got that way then and just wander off around it and so that three dimensional the the ability to hold three dimensional objects in my head and manipulate them around is superpower I think I don't think wait I I thought everybody could do it till I started speaking to people and it turns out we can't do it I I think I think we fill in the gaps.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

I think we fill in gaps which neotypical people leave and people don't really notice it because we just kind of quietly say something and they go oh it makes sense once it's been said but um I think that that's one of our contributions um okay so talking about maps um what about oral memory? So you can say you can picture the map but if someone said okay what you need to do is go left to the next lights right to the following lights then you get to a stop sign and turn right there and then third X on the roundabout.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

Oh no that'll go that's a sequence of things.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yes so that's not good.

Sequences, Games, And Working Memory

SPEAKER_02 26:21

That's not good. That's maybe not described in a way that would work it said if you follow that river down there turn right in the next valley you'd be fine right after doing that. Actually even better if I'd done it before because then I've I've got the pre-picture of what it would look like. Yeah but there's the sequence of uh sequence of things you know apple orange banana banana banana apple orange not happening there's a game oh which my family love to play and it does my head in is uh taco cat goat cheese pizza have you played that we know that no honestly mate for for dyslexic people it's it's like somebody's come up with either the world's greatest way of diagnosing or the greatest way of discussing this so you have to go through the sequence you have to go taco cat goat cheese pizza whilst putting down cards that have different pictures on yeah and when the picture and the word match everybody's slapped in the middle and by the time I I've already realized I've gone through the sequence and everything's matched up the rest of the family's already got their hands on the table and I'm like what oh I've never yet won it.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

There's um in youth group kids are quite keen on um I can't even remember the name of it because it's a sequence of words duck duck I don't know something yeah and you know I just I I have to go make up a tea at that point. Yeah spail I think this is just going to be too embarrassing for everybody involved because it's gonna get to me I'm gonna say I'm sorry what was what was the animal again?

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Yeah however really good at double good because none of the objects none of the objects are the same twice and uh they're always mixed around so you're not you're then looking for disconnected patterns.

Pet Peeves And Practical Advice

Closing Reflections

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Yeah and one of the greatest things in my life is um is connections on the New York Times kind of games thing because I just see the patterns you just see the words and you have the patterns just to kind of say oh this is this and that the rest everyone else is just anyway so um pet peeve have you got a pet peeve um when I ask somebody to spell something and they go uh really quickly yeah so it's like if I say uh I and I I'm saying the word because I can read the word on my second screen it's like say um can you oh can you spell meeting for me and I've got yeah yeah yeah M E M E E T T I N G I'm like what you maybe spell me in the letters so so so not that they can spell it quickly but they you they can expect you therefore to therefore know what it's quickly yeah excellent yeah I like that I'm glad that's my pet peeves now I don't really register as being a pet peeve but yes it is okay so you've obviously very successful in what you do your professor um you've got a great career behind you and you're everywhere um in terms of academia and supporting students and um helping them achieve so what advice or hacks or insights can you offer there's obviously quite a few but one specifically find a coping strategy find some a piece of tech or something and and learn how to use it and go with it that's good yeah yeah but try try different ones as well yeah we'll find out what works for you you've got to find your own but find get your work out your coping strategy that's the yeah you you will everybody when you speak to people they all have their coping strategy and you so work out what yours is and run with it sounds good excellent thank you very much um that was um that was really fascinating and it's good to see someone else on the same or similar journey yeah it's always always nice to talk cheers david