Different Minds, Different Strengths

Dr. Long works as a pediatrician in New York City. She graduated from Yale University with an undergraduate degree and from University of Pennsylvania with an MD. She is the loving mother of 4 boys. Dr. Long has dyslexia and shared with us about that piece of her life, which you can read below.

BTL: Could you speak about coming to know that you had dyslexia when you were a young girl? Did you feel it was evident to you prior or was this something that surprised you?

DL: When I was in elementary and middle school, I was not a great reader. I remember faking my abilities to sound words out. If I couldn’t sound out a word, I’d try to figure out what made sense based on the context and pictures so as not to set off any alarms. After years of doing this in school, I had figured out how to fake this successfully because I knew English words and could make inferences based on context clues, but when I began to take Latin as a 9th grader, this wasn’t possible anymore. My Latin teacher noticed my difficulties reading and writing in Latin and brought it up to my parents, at which point I was diagnosed with dyslexia in 10th grade. I wasn’t surprised to learn that I struggled with reading in a significant way–my brother and dad also did. But I didn’t know there was a formal diagnosis associated with it. We know so much more about learning disabilities now as compared to when I was in elementary and middle school.

BTL: Can you speak a bit about how having dyslexia affects your academic life or work life? What measures have you taken to help support yourself in school, especially since receiving the diagnosis?

DL: Academically, reading something like a novel takes a while, at a rate of maybe twenty pages an hour. I was able to receive extra time on certain tests, like the SAT. I would scan sentences and constantly omit words–this made the test very difficult for me, especially with the specific and fast-paced timing structure. I did not get extra time on other tests though in math or science–naturally, these subjects were easier for me. I focused on these, and they became my strength, which became more obvious during my time in medical school.  

BTL: How does having dyslexia affect your social and personal life– if it does at all? Does this feel relevant in your personal relationships?

DL: The only way I would say it affects me socially is that I’m a little anxious to read aloud in public, especially in groups. I can make stupid typing errors at work–when I realize I misspelled, I think, wow they probably think I am an idiot. It doesn’t significantly impact my self-esteem, but I am certainly more self-conscious about reading. I don’t want to be judged as not smart.

BTL: Has being dyslexic ever affected you as a doctor?

DL: I do not think so, not in my particular job. There are definitely careers where it would be more evident and impact me–I’d be a terrible editor, lawyer, or journalist. But my work in medicine takes advantage of my strengths, so dyslexia hasn’t impacted my work life negatively. 

BTL: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

DL: I didn’t really focus on what I wasn’t good at. I honed in on what I was good at, and paved my way. Besides the emotional aspect of it, it’s also been so interesting to think about the varying capacities of different people’s brains. When I was younger, I compared myself to my sports coach and I thought her brain worked better than mine. Over time, though, I realized that she was better at specific tasks than me, not intellectually better than me on the whole. My kids and my husband remind me that intelligence and strengths look different in each person–they have their strengths and I have mine.