[During the spring of my tenth-grade year] I was asked to go to the counselor’s office. It was there that reality hit hard. Her words were powerful. "Veronica, your grades would indicate that you are not going to graduate with your class if you don’t shape up. You have to put more time into your studies. Next year, the coursework will get more difficult, and you will have to work even harder. You know that in your math class you are not doing very well; as a matter of fact, you are close to failing. You have already received one F in Art History. You are going to have to try harder, buckle down. Are you willing to do that?" Never did she ask me if I knew how to study, or if I could even read or understand what was being taught, she just used the catch-all words, "try harder," or I would not graduate.

In my mind I was feeling that I was lazy and slow — an unmotivated kid — even though she personally did not use those words. When I would think of myself this way, I would perseverate on them to the point where I would spend hours of time and energy covering up my failures. One way I would do this is to work as many hours a week as I could at my job. There, I found peace and fulfillment; I was good at something. I knew I could run circles around the other employees, fixing things, working faster at cleanup than anyone else, always looking for more to do when it was slow. So was I really slow? Was I really lazy, when my mind would race to come up with new ways of doing odd jobs? Was I really unmotivated? Not in my job; there I was happy. Despite the pain and failure I experienced in school, I still got up each day and faced it head on. I would find a way, somehow.

Unfortunately, the tug of insecurity began to create more devastating emotional struggles. I began to develop more behaviors to control my environment, or so I thought I could control it. Denial became my companion. I could drink to create comfort in my head. I could cheat and believe in a strange way that I had actually done the work myself. I cheated so convincingly the teachers never doubted me. I could laugh about my grades, receiving each D and F as if it were no big deal. I’d been getting them so long that it began to seem normal. By now it didn’t matter. I didn’t care anymore, or so I convinced myself. I would somehow get by on my looks, love of people, insight, hard work, and musical ability. It didn’t matter how, I just would. Deep down I hated myself; I just wasn’t ready to admit it. Instead, I acted out. I learned self-destructive behaviors, stayed in an addictive relationship in which I became controlled, and tried to convince myself I was something different than I was. All along I knew exactly who I was — a failure, I was just hiding behind a facade of success that had become so real that even I sometimes believed it.

Somehow I was able to get through the rest of my tenth-grade year. At one point, I was asked to work an hour per day as an assistant to a second-grade teacher. Okay, it was an opportunity to get out of a difficult class, but I didn’t know until I entered the room that first day just how much I would be challenged even here. It was the work the teacher wanted me to do — to read to the kids, grade papers, and help them with their homework. I found I was inept, even with subject matter targeted toward much younger children. I could read some of the stories but I would stumble over some words. The task that gave me the most difficulty was grading math, English, and other papers. I could not do it without a teacher’s answer sheet, and many times because the work was so simple there was not one available. I remember one second-grade boy telling me I was showing another student how to do their work the wrong way. I could feel the heat in my face from embarrassment. Soon, I was asked to not return; my help was not needed. I was never told why, but I knew the answer.

To this day, I still wonder just exactly how I even got by in the tenth grade. I received no help from my teachers, and even in study hall with someone specifically there to help, nothing was done. I asked the aide to help me a couple of times, and she would just look at me with evil eyes and tell me I was not trying enough. The only way I did succeed (if you can call it that) was to make use of my exceptional skill at cheating. After these many years of practice, it was no surprise that I was able once again to pull it off.

Commentary from Larry B. Silver, M.D.

As Veronica tells her story, she shows us time and again that learning disabilities are not just school difficulties. They are life disabilities. Her math problems affected her ability to make change on her job and to give the right change in the cafeteria. Her limited reading comprehension and written language skills forced her to cover up so many situations in which these skills were needed. As we follow her from ninth to tenth to eleventh and finally to twelfth grade, the story remains consistent. Most teachers reacted to her academic difficulties with frustration and anger. Veronica's tearful description of trying to read or to copy or to write suggests that she was trying as hard as she could. If there is one message that educators need to get from this book, it is that no child or adolescent is lazy or unmotivated without a reason. It is important for educators and others who care about young people to try to find the reason rather than attack the behavior. A teacher could have sat down with Veronica and asked her to read or write or spell, for example. It would not have taken long to realize that there were serious problems to be understood and addressed.