Jack of All Trades
Sunday, June 1st, 2008
© 2008 Richard Mellott
I started out as a kid who was always active, never fit in, and had trouble making friends my own age. I’d get beaten up because I was awkward and wore glasses, so I retreated into reading books. By the time I was 14, I had read Freud, Jung, Hesse, Heinlein, Asimov, Voltaire, Watts, Gurdjieff, James, Lang, and many other philosophers, science fiction authors, religious authors, historical fiction, psychologists, and had a collection of 2,000 books I had snitched from booksellers all over my hometown. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do math, and still couldn’t settle down, so I started hanging with the crowd that had the best self-medicating going, this being back in the late 1960s. My hair grew, my beard grew, and by the time I dropped out of High School, I was a geek/hippie.
I finished my GED in 1971, then went to Ann Arbor’s University of Michigan, where I maintained a B average for about 3 semesters. I then left school again, to go work in a junkyard in Columbus, Ohio. While there, I hung out with friends from the local art school, went to concerts, and just generally wasted a year. After that, I hitchhiked out to Wyoming, worked as a cowboy, and got married, eventually having a family. Over the next 14 years, I had 3-5 jobs per year, and can count over 35 occupations from that period. Talk about a jack of all trades, master of none.
As I sank into depression, knowing I was living way below my potential, there was a constant feeling of isolation, despair at being somehow different,and that something was wrong with me. I finally gave in, and got some help. I also got a divorce, leaving a daughter dangling between her mother and I. When I went into this clinic in Salt Lake City, it took a short interview, a test called the Minnesota Multi-phasic Personality Inventory, and I was given a diagnosis of ADHD; coinciding with a Learning Disability in Mathematics that was diagnosed at a later date when I had gotten back into school, the pieces of the puzzle came together, and I got to see who I really was. It was truly liberating, and I was happy for maybe the first time since being a young, clueless teenager.
I did a lot of volunteer work for the organization that was a predecessor to Learning Disabilities Association (LDA), and ended up being the Utah State Chairman of the Adult section (only about 10 of us were regular members, statewide, in 1984). I ended up going to the Association of Children and Adults with Learning Disabilities (ACLD) conference in San Francisco that year, and found that I was finally with “my people.” I ended up getting a degree in Special Education from the University of Utah in 1988, where I attended classes with the help of the Office of Students with Disabilities, and the Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. At that time, I had been a taxi driver for eight long years. They helped me learn to advocate for myself, and I was able to take most of my tests on the latest educational technology: The Apple IIe computer was my savior. I also no longer felt like something was wrong, but rather that I hadn’t found my voice.
Fast forward to today, I have been a Resource Specialist in Southern California for 20 years; just got my M.A. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and my Assistive Technology Provider’s certification from CSUN; and I have been a presenter at a conference by Computer Using Educators. I’m proud of my 3.7 GPA, and it’s all been with the help of the word processors and earphones that have been lifelines to focus and self-expression. I have also been a Math Teacher, but I never venture past Algebra 1.
Moral of the story: Never give up, just find a way to get help to learn how to express yourself. Nobody needs to go it alone, and there is now plenty of help out there. Back when I was a kid, none of the places like this website were in existence, nobody knew what to do with a kid like me, and yet I found a way. I’m still different, have fewer friendships than I’d like, and I’ve been around the block a few more times than I’d like with the relationships in my life, but I know I am a successful adult. My daughter is in my life, I have a wonderful wife and teenage rock star stepson, and I live in a nice neighborhood. Really, I’ve done okay, despite my trials and tribulations. I also feel like the last twenty years I have tried to give back to those kids coming up behind me, so that my experiences needn’t be repeated.
Richard,
Thanks for sharing your story. It’s very inspirational. I’ve already shared it with a few people.
By the way, I like the way you write. To the point.
Thanks again.
Sanford
Richard, thank you so much for sharing your story. I too am an educator and am trying to help my students. One little boy seems to be headed down a similar path and I am going to share your story with him and his parents. They are just starting to seek out assistance and this website is a great tool. Thanks again, Michelle
All I can say is thanks to you, as educators (in reply to both comments) for being there. I consider myself a fortunate survivor, since many in my generation “stayed lost.” The up-and-coming generations will benefit from all of the research that’s in the pipeline, all of the professionals like myself who are practitioners, and from the volunteers/professionals who, like Mr. Wanderman, Michele,and Sanford, deliver resources and contacts to those in need. Thanks for caring.
To be honest Richard, we “educators” learn (hopefully) through people like you, about the variety of learning profiles there are. There’s a richness in not being all the same.
On the one hand it’s really valuable to define difficulties in specific parts of learning, with precision in labeling and description, such as NVLD. It can give an enlarged perspective and point towards correct and appropriate education.
On the other hand if we lay too much value of one profile over another, we’ve missed the point. That’s why I hope we eventually get to using a Universal Design approach to educating our kids.
As Temple Grandin says in effect, “If all we had were people who were good socially, we’d still be sitting around in caves talking.” (something like that).
Keep on truckin’ Richard.
I agree whole-headedly. I can’t teach in the same modality twice in a row, anyhow, and find more and more of the up-and-coming kids have many more skills, especially in the area of technology. So, I teach in Universal Design, with various layers of curriculum, and almost always in a cross-curriculum fashion, so I am hitting both information deficits and learning deficits at the same time. One day, we’ll all be metacognitive wizards, but in the meantime, it’s up to us to moderate, modulate, and remediate….I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!
Keep up the good werks!
Do you know of any middle and high schools in Salt Lake or PArk City that are specially for LD kids?