What is Dysgraphia?

I recall that when I was in kindergarten, the teacher once called me to her table and scolded me about how poorly drawn my Z’s were. I had tried to explain to her that holding the pencil straight was hard for me, in addition to which my hand would hurt if I had to write for very long. I managed to get it right in the end but, to date, my handwriting is quite terrible.

First grade was when we were first required to write sentences and paragraphs in assignments. We would be given blank sheets to write about things such as what we wanted to do in the future or what our room looked like. I would be brimming with ideas but putting them on paper was hard. In addition to the previous problems, I was unable to write in a straight line as the sheets were not ruled and the sizes of the words would vary too. The teachers didn’t complain much about this but were unhappy about the incorrect capitalization, incorrect spelling and poor punctuation.

By the time I reached middle school, we had been made to switch from using pencils to pens. A lot of students preferred this but it was terrible for me. As mentioned earlier, I made a lot of mistakes during writing assignments, and would thus have to erase and correct a lot. Having to use a pen meant I could no longer do this and had to cross out my mistakes instead. This made my work look untidy and possibly resulted in point deductions in certain tests too.

During COVID-19, I got lucky as our teachers were ok with our work being submitted in the form of typed documents. During this time I realised none of the problems I had writing translated to typing and I didn’t even make any spelling or punctuation errors (I had autocorrect off so I know for sure.)

In the tenth grade, I was diagnosed with Dysgraphia, a learning disorder that inhibited my ability to write properly. When this diagnosis was shown to the school, they were steadfast in giving me the help I needed. I was given extra time during my exams and even got to use the laptop for a few of them. This served to solve all my writing-related problems and resulted in me scoring an A* and an A in my English subjects (FLE and Literature).

If you have trouble writing and suffer from any of the problems I mentioned, I suggest you get yourself checked in order to confirm whether or not you have a writing disorder too. You can find more information on this website.