From Dyslexia to Top Performance

I was delighted...

to be invited to join a team at Mid-Sweden university, to explore ways of functioning as an internet tutor for students doing distance courses in English, with colleagues in London and Brisbane, and the prospect of working with students in a variety of places including Sweden, Germany and Italy. It felt very appropriate that the amount of money it would bring in was about the same as what I spent getting myself functioning as a Mac user.

The reality turned out to have a much higher factor of frustration than I could imagine possible: but there was no shortage of rewards too, as students wrote such things as

• "It was really instructive to read your comments..."
• "It's been fun doing the tasks and sending them to you. I've learned a lot. Too bad that the course is over."
• "I'm very pleased that you really try to explain and tell me what you think....it opens my eyes so I can do something about it."

 But surely most satisfying was the student who started by writing about all the problems he, as a dyslexic, had with his studying, and his first task could hardly be graded as a pass: while the tasks he sent in after our interaction could only be given 90%... I'm fairly used to that effect when there's face-to-face contact, but for it to work by writing and e-mail was something completely new, and nothing one could be sure of...