Khadija Chudnoff, a liberal arts major, said she was diagnosed with the common learning disorder dyslexia when she was in kindergarten.
“I used to love telling people I had it because people thought it was a disease, so I’d get sympathy. I would tell my classmates I had dyslexia to try to get attention,” she said. “I liked it at first. I didn’t know that I was so far behind; I thought it was normal to get taken out of class for extra help. Until I was in middle school I didn’t get that I had to do so much extra work.”
Dyslexia is described as trouble reading due to problems with recognizing how speech sounds relate to written letters and words, according to MayoClinic.org.
Chudnoff had an especially difficult time when she was in middle school. While other students were reading books like “Lord of the Flies,” “Of Mice and Men” and “The Odyssey,” she was struggling with Dr. Seuss.
“It was a big shock for me,” Chudnoff said.
When she was in eighth grade, she was placed into a new reading program that started her and other students from scratch. She said she resented her parents for her dyslexia and hated that she had to attend the class.
“I remember the first day. (The teacher) had this big sheet of words and said, ‘We’re going to start reading these simple words, and they’re going to get hard soon.’ I thought it was a joke,” Chudnoff said. “We got to the four- and five-letter words and I could hardly do it.”
By the end of eighth grade, Chudnoff had raised her reading level from a preschool level to a seventh-grade level.
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling were the first books that piqued Chudnoff’s interest in recreational reading. She read the fifth book in a single day, she said.
“I stayed up for 24 hours and I read it; I’d never done anything like it in my life,” she said. “I was crying because Sirius Black died and I was crying because I was so proud of myself. I never thought I would ever be able to do something like that.”
Now Chudnoff’s reading is at the college level, but even during her first year she found she was putting in a tremendous effort to keep up.
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She said she always knew that she would attend college even though it was going to be a challenge. She said college is considered a must in her family — both her parents and grandparents went to college.
She said her workload in high school was double that of her peers because in addition to the homework, which she spent twice as long doing, she had to take classes that were teaching her how to read.
“I was burnt out, I didn’t want to be in school anymore,” Chudnoff said. “I feel like I should have my master’s degree, not a bachelor’s.”
Now that Chudnoff has completed her degree with a 3.7 GPA, she is doing freelance work as a makeup artist and plans to pursue work in the movie industry doing special effects makeup and screenwriting.
“I feel like my kids will have no excuse not to get good grades,” Chudnoff said. “I went from sounding out ‘Cat in the Hat’ in seventh grade to graduating with close to a 4.0 GPA. I’m definitely not graduating college with a 4.0, but I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done, too.”
Fin Martinez is a freelance reporter at the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @FinMartinez.
