A debut memoir about overcoming educational challenges.

As a small child, O’Neal had a significant speech delay and was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder. By the time he reached middle school, he noticed that he frequently felt that his “mind was in a fog” when doing homework assignments. His difficulties caused his self-confidence to plummet, and the author clearly describes how this increased his anxiety and affected his ability to make friends: “I sensed a constant feeling of disapproval among my peers.” he writes. In order to ward off bullies, he said, he would often remain silent: “like a normal fish in a lake full of piranhas, most of the time it’s better to just hide.” Despite this, O’Neal was passionate about several subjects and had many interests outside of school, including playing computer games, building mechanical devices, and learning how to write computer code. Supported by his mother, he took every opportunity to further his knowledge in his areas of interest and spent a good deal of time writing programs in BASIC. O’Neal’s writing is sometimes bogged down by unnecessary details; for example, he devotes too much attention to the technical aspects of some of his school projects, such as “cable crimpers” and “RJ45 Ethernet cables.” However, he also cleverly articulates how programming helped him to understand what type of thinker and learner he was: “I started to uniformly mold my life around simple statements as if I were writing a program.” O’Neal notes that he wrote this book, about his life as a student with learning disorders, in order to “create a road map that others can follow,” and overall, it’s a lucid and revealing work that may be inspiring for students, teachers, and parents. For example, he relates how, at school, he availed himself of every means of support, including one-on-one instruction and after-school homework help. These resources helped to slowly build his self-esteem, allowing him to apply to his high school’s business and technology academy and eventually earn a bachelor’s degree in technology management at National University in La Jolla, California.

An honest and straightforward success story.