Discoveries of a visual spatial learner.
...me?
...gifted?
Even as early as kindergarten I remember feeling as though I didn't fit in. My teacher said I was a free spirit. I knew she didn't think that was a good thing. I couldn't understand why we had to sit and wait and do nothing!
When teachers made us copy things off of the board, it was extremely difficult for me. I got into trouble because my handwriting was sloppy and I could never seem to write on the lines. More often than not I had to sit in from recess to finish my work.
When I left class I couldn't remember what had been taught even though the material wasn't challenging. Some of the other students seemed to have no trouble at all. I wondered somewhere around third grade why I was so dumb.
If the teacher called on me, it made me very uncomfortable because my answers were generally more abstract. The other students would laugh. Pretty soon I stopped answering and pretended like I didn't know.
I know now that the reason why I didn't do well in school was because they were teaching in words when I learn in pictures. Classes are generally taught by lecture, especially in high school, so the information never really went in and stuck; it just kind of went in one ear and out the other, if it didn't just bounce off first. The words needed a picture to attach themselves to and there weren't any.
By the time I was in fifth grade I was very depressed. I was misdiagnosed with ADHD. The drugs seemed to force me to operate more as an auditory person, removing just about all my creative thinking abilities, termed "distractions." I'm not made to be an auditory person. With my creative juices blocked I felt like I was living in a void. I couldn't do well in either world. Looking back, it doesn't seem like anyone even knew there was such a thing as a visual spatial learner much less what to do with one.
By the time I was a junior in high school my mom became determined to prove to me that I posessed musical giftedness. I didn't believe her but I didn't rule her thoughts out completely because something about the idea felt right. After all, I could play nine instruments most of which I taught myself. The day we brought home my flute I played the theme from "Titanic." I didn't have the music; I just seemed to know. We discovered that creatively gifted people are called visual spatial.
Next year I will go to a school for the creatively gifted. I will be in class with other visual spatial
students. I can't wait! I won't feel odd any more. There will be a whole school full of people that
think and learn like I do. Look out!!!
