My Mentor

For me, finding a mentor was easy.  I had a choice of one person for the entire state of Utah. I didn’t have the choice of ‘interviewing’ or even reading a few credentials before I chose. Rather my decision was do I want to travel that far every day for a week, to go to my class?  So I sent an email out and waited for a response.

I want you to meet Cindy.  She is my dyslexia mentor.  I got an email back from her quickly, and a time was set up that my wife and I could go and visit her, and see if this program would be beneficial for me.  I remember her doing one exercise with me.  With my eyes closed, I pictured a piece of cake in one hand, with the point of it pointing towards my wife.  She then took my pointing finger of the other hand, placed it by my eye, and then asked me to view this piece of cake from that finger, and she was going to move my hand, and I was to see if I could see that piece of cake at different angles, all the time while the cake was still pointing towards my wife.  I had no problem following that in my mind.  It was as if a camera moved and went around the cake, and you could see all the sides of the cake, while the cake was still, like you would see on TV or in a movie. 

Cindy said I was a very visual person.  Now, about a year later, I understand why I close my eyes when I need to think or concentrate on something.  I am literally looking at the problem.  And seeing a picture, I see soo many angles, and other challenges that may come up in the process of that particular solution.  But that is another story, as that is a part of ‘my gift.’

As I said before, this class is not cheap.  I was unemployed, and we were struggling to keep our bills paid.  I sent out an email for assistance to my children who might be able to contribute a little to help pay for this, and talked to my parents in person.  My parents were the only ones who pitched in to help.  That meant a lot to me in many ways.  While what they contributed was far from the total cost, it was also by their means a huge sacrifice and commitment on their part.  Second, I felt my parents love and concern for me, as I was trying to improve myself.  Now I was ‘accountable’ to someone else besides my wife, in following through with this program.

But we still needed a lot more money.  We had already drained all savings and retirement funds that I had accumulated by this time, and the only thing left was to put this on a credit card, which neither my wife or I wanted to do.  Then one day, my wife suggested that we sell some stock she was purchasing at her job for some of her retirement to pay for this.  That had never crossed my mind, and I asked her if she was sure she wanted to do that.  It is a no brainer that this was far better, than paying the high interest rate on credit cards, but it was cutting in on what little we had left for retirement.  My wife said that if I thought this program would help me, it would be worth the sacrifice.  So we sold the needed shares of stock to come up with the difference, and a time was reserved for me to take the class. A decision was made, and I was committed to taking this class.

In a class of one, there is no one to sit behind, or someone else to answer the questions.  It is you and the teacher. Not the type of situation one likes who is use to sitting in the back of the class room.  Now I was sitting behind a desk, which was an older one, and had clay in the uneven parts of the desk. I thought that was interesting.  I didn’t realize that I was soon to contribute to that clay build up on that desk.  Me, a 50 plus person, playing with clay! Cindy was sitting on a chair directly across from me at that table.  Not only did this help my mind not to wonder, but she could tell, sitting that close, when my mind did start to wonder!

As I mentioned before, I am a very visual person.  So the best way for such a person to internalize things is to ‘clay’ it out.  So I was making people, or plants, or homes, or any word or concept I wasn’t sure of out of clay to help me visualize it.  Cindy showed me a way we could make a person quickly out of clay.  I was ready to take that person and use it, but she rolled it up into a ball.  No, this mentor wasn’t going to let me use her clay person.  I had to create my own.  If I didn’t make it out of clay, I didn’t ‘own’ it.  It had to be mine!  And I paid how much to play with clay?  And this teacher wouldn’t help me with some figures?

Now she wanted me to make all the letters of the alphabet in capital letters, same height, which ever height I wanted it to be.  You know how much rolling of clay you have to do to come up with enough ‘rope clay’ to make all 26 letters?  And she wouldn’t help me by rolling out the clay! How long is this week going to be?

I managed to get through that first day OK.  Physically, I didn’t move much, but mentally, my mind was exhausted.  It had been stretched, pushed, and pulled to positions it hadn’t been before.  Cindy told me I probably wouldn’t have problems falling asleep that night.  She was right.

Next blog: zyx…