Otis Discusses How Dyslexia Has Impacted His Life, When He Told Tucker About It

On the latest edition of Chasing Glory with Lilian Garcia, Otis discussed how dyslexia has impacted his life, how it took him months before he told Tucker, and how difficult college was for him because of dyslexia. Highlights are below.

On how people would make jokes about dyslexia when he would tell them he has it: “That sort of thing too, when you just say something and it stings people inside but they don’t say anything about it, it’s the same where, a joke is, every time I’ve mentioned it, I’ve gotten a giggle and says, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And it’s like, you just kind of go with it.”

On how long it took to tell Tucker about his dyslexia: “Took me about, maybe six months to tell Tucky, said, ‘Hey Man, this is like,’ because we got together as a team, we didn’t know each other that well, and then we started becoming friends and this and that and getting our work in the ring somehow fine-tuned, I told him, I said, ‘Hey man, I really just can’t read this.'”

On how he would get pain in the back of his head from dyslexia: “I remember at finals in college, when I tried going to college, I get this weird pain in the back of my head, and the doctor said, I was getting these headaches, I was getting freaked out, I was like, what is going on. You just get this, I don’t know how to explain it, the nerves, the tension, the back of your head is very high stress, it’s from you trying to read and comprehend, just trying to get that basically. In high school, I had my angel teacher, Barbara Danielson, she helped me through everything, every test she was my reader, ACT she was my reader, we just had a great relationship, and she did her best to get me passing for those athletics.”

On how difficult college was for him: “They have programs, but say for a book, if I need an audio CD, an audio tape, to comprehend the book, some classes don’t even have them, so literally you go to the teacher and you go what should I do, well, that’s on you, because no one is going to sit with you and read that much pages every night. So college was tough. I’m not bitter about a lot of things but maybe a little bitter about college.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit Chasing Glory with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.

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