This is a very personal story and I’ll keep it personal because I don’t know what anyone else’s lived experience is. If you’re young and this resonates for you, you’ll figure it out.

My undiagnosed dyscalculia combined with an unnecessarily difficult calculus course at mun.ca cost me my degree. All other requirements met.

Yeah I am throwing shade because I was made to feel stupid by callous faculty when I fully understood why you’d want tests for sequences and series but just couldn’t hack those exams and assignments where they threw three curveballs per problem.

I grew to understand trig in high school by programming a rotating cube on a Sharp calculator. It ran at .5 fps. My teacher passed me because it was clear I had a grasp.

I would have done better at UofT - I compared their curriculum after the fact. One maybe two curve balls per question. Just couldn’t afford it.

I still have to use my fingers to count basic addition and subtraction. I can’t read an analog clock unless I really think about it. I have immense problems remembering the names of people I just met.

Luckily, at the time, I had a history of good IT admin work to make up for it.

And 25 years later, I am very happy with how my career has gone, no letters to my name.

It’s good to see someone else’s famous and major success despite such a burden.

For anyone else, get whatever exemption you can. Lord knows the golf caddy of their rich parents’ friends do the same.

I’d be as bitter as the prof who smoked cigars in his office, but my Cayley medal still hangs on the wall as a reminder of something that would take way too long to put to words.