What are people saying about the book High School Dropout to Harvard

Karey and I both read this opening chapter and I think it is a hoot. I mean it is a great read. I could picture all of your adventures as if I was there. We enjoyed your gentle humor and memories that reminded us of author Jean Shepherd and his laugh out loud short stories." -Karey & Howie Degraaf dyslexicvictoriaonline.com

What a wonderful recollection and tale of life. You have a talent for capturing the essence of life in your stories. -Sterling B. Epps

I loved your comments on helping a person reach to their strengths instead of trying to fix their weaknesses. -Kim Hicks-Horton

Thank you for sharing chapters of your story- as a mother of a high sensory boy, I always look for the positive ways in which he learns. -Jennifer Chacon Maloney

This is the kind of story that's always right on time. It's easy to read, relatable and funny, but real. It's the kind of work that moves one to tears in a paragraph, and giggles by the next. Even though your experience is uniquely yours, John, you present it in such a way that readers can apply the lessons you learned to their own lives without making the message sound generic and cookie-cutter. That's a real talent. -Dimma Kalu Harvard University

"You need to know that, even before this email and seeing the rest of the book, our Board has decided to ask you to present at the conference we are planning." -Arline Krieger Pomona/ Inland LDA

{1} Broken Glasses

I was born in Fullerton, California at St. Jude hospital. I was a 10-pound baby boy. My poor mom. To this day she will not let me forget how much pain I put her through when I was born. According to my parents, I moved around so much during the delivery that I cut my lip and my mom on the way out, and we both needed stitches. Even back then I couldnt sit still. Growing up something seemed off to me, but I couldnt quite tell what it was. It seemed like something was off balance, or did not quite fit. Since this was only obvious to myself, I kept my mouth shut and went about my days trying to conceal any differences I might have from the other kids. My parents seemed to have very little patience with me. I seemed to always be breaking things, because my ability to judge distance and how hard or soft to put something down seemed to be off. I think I must have set a new world record for the number of drinking glasses I cracked, broke, or dropped as a child. It seemed that every time I reached for my glass of juice or water I

would misgauge the distance, and close or open my hand too early or late. This would inevitably result in tipping over the glass onto the table or onto the floor. This was doubly bad in my house, because not only would I usually break or crack a glass, but I would also send a small wave of juice across the table towards the carpet. I would scramble to get a napkin to stop the liquid before it rolled over the edge of the table and onto the floor, but for some reason, I always seemed to be just a little too late, and all I could do was watch as it rolled over the edge and onto the carpet. This was followed by a chorus from my parents of, Why cant you drink something without spilling it? from my dad, and Why cant I ever have anything nice in this house? from my mom. These comments from my parents only increased my anxiety when I was drinking from a glass. I still, to this day, feel anxious when I reach for a glass, but at home with my sweet and loving wife, we use clear plastic cups from Crate and Barrel. They never break! I love these! I cant believe that something so simple would make me so happy, but they do. The anxiety and fear my parents created in me was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I envy kids nowadays with their fancy superhero and cartoon character plastic cups. Where were you when I needed you? We did not have anything like this in my house when I was growing up. We just had endless sets of promotional glasses from McDonalds and Burger King, and inexpensive glasses from Pic N Save and Longs Drugs. I would break these wonderful glasses as fast as we would collect or buy them. Even now I get a rush of excitement when I deliberately break a glass. Could I be secretly Greek? I grew up in Orange County, CA, when it was mainly orange groves. We lived in a small town called Fullerton, 15 minutes away from the happiest place on earth, Disneyland. We lived in the suburbs in a happy little bubble. My brother Mike was a year older, and from the time we learned to crawl and walk we kept my mom and dad on their toes. We lived on Michael Street, at the end of the block in a cul de sac. This made it perfect for playing touch football and baseball in the street. There were a lot of other kids who lived on our block, so all my brother and I had to do was step outside of our house and we had a dozen kids to play with. My parents were an interesting combination. My mother was born in Baton Rouge, LA, and my father was born in the Bronx, NY. My father was a product of tenement buildings in the Bronx, so he grew up very poor. He was physically and verbally abused by his mother and separated from his alcoholic father, who died when he was a teenager. My father had a stuttering problem growing up that made him not want to talk to anyone. My mother was the product of Louisiana; she was French-Creole, American Indian, Choctaw, and Creek. She grew up in a farmhouse in Baton Rouge with two brothers and two sisters. They had a small movie theater on their property where they would show second-run movies and Saturday morning cartoons. My grandfather did not believe in employing anyone in his movie theater who wasnt in the family, and would work cheaply or for free. He had all of his kids running the movie theater. My mom and her sisters ran the concession stand, aunts and uncles sold tickets, and her brothers, Jimmy and Harold, ran the movie projectors. My grandfather was very frugal, or as some people say, cheap. This is a habit that my mom developed from him, and she was always good with money, while my dad was not. My parents met at a party in Fullerton, CA. They both worked in the hospital after attending college. My dad became a male nurse, and my mom a lab tech. When my parents decided to get married, the first thing they did was scrape up enough money for a down payment on a house. One of the cheapest places to live at the time was Orange County, CA, because it was mainly

orange groves and not that well developed. They bought a small house on half an acre of land. They only had enough money for the down payment; not much more. The house was in such bad shape that my mother sat on the back porch and cried the first time she saw it. Now that my parents had a new house, they were faced with a challenge; how to furnish their new house without any money. In Orange County at the time, most of the houses looked similar, but inside our house was an assortment of mismatched furniture, silverware and plates that made our house look like something out of a bad movie. My brother and I joked if something matched in our house my parents would demand that we change it, or remove it immediately. Most of the furnishings were discovered in second hand stores and garage sales. This is why everything in our house didnt match, from chairs to sofas, silverware, and end tables. The only thing that matched in our house was the green shag carpet. This was in most of the rooms. Our house was a pirates paradise. It was filled with treasure from all over Southern California. Our house would have made Fred G. Sanford proud. If you can believe it, for many years while I was growing up our living room table was a picnic table/park bench. One day my dad showed up with this picnic table and moved it into our dining room. My mother never said anything or asked where it came from. Growing up, I always wondered whether there was park somewhere with a missing picnic table. This picnic table sat in our dining room for many years, as the centerpiece to our empire. Years later, the bench was moved into the back yard when my parents bought a traditional dining room table with matching chairs. I missed that old table when we got the new one. I always felt closer to my family on the picnic table than in individual chairs. Growing up, it was me and my older brother, Mike. We had one car, a white Volkswagen van. In the summers my parents would load us in the VW camper and we would drive across country to places like Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Texas, or Louisiana. The one thing I could always count on during these trips was my dad talking to everybody; in gas stations, diners, campgrounds, state parks, you name it. The interesting thing about my dad striking up conversations with new people he met along the way is that he would be so caught up in the conversation that he would forget things and it would not be until we were miles down the road that he would remember. One thing that would help jar his memory is when cars pulled up alongside ours, and pointed to the back of our car. Sometimes these cars would roll down their window and yell, Your gas cap is missing! Your gas cap is missing! You have no gas cap! My dad would pull over on the side of the road, and sure enough, the gas cap was missing. This happened so often that we spent a lot of time going through old boxes of lost gas caps until we found one that fit. The funny thing about this is that my dad was so excited about being out with the family on vacation that he wanted to meet everyone and introduce us to everyone. I still remember my mom saying after this happened for the third or fourth time on one trip, For gods sake Doug, not again I loved kindergarten, and my teacher, Mrs. Green. I have many distinct memories in my life, and one of my first memories in school was in Mrs. Greens kindergarten class. She was so great! In her class we had art, music, colors and shapes, and building blocks to work with. I remember her class vividly, building with red cardboard blocks, sitting on the carpet singing and napping, climbing to the top of the eagles perch on the monkey bars, and letters pinned to our shirts. My parents still have a clay hand print I made when I was five. I think that kindergarten was my crowning glory in my K-12 education. Everything after that was never as good as kindergarten. From first grade on it was all downhill. It wasnt until I reached college that I began having the same amazing experiences as I did in kindergarten. This

is why I liked college so much and did so well. I think that kindergarten and college are similar, because youre able to explore and follow your educational curiosity in whatever direction it takes you. Visual thinkers thrive in this environment. In 1st through 12th grade, the system is so regimented that it allows little room for an individuals academic curiosity. This system also judges everyone based on a narrow linear system, which doesnt take into account different types of intelligence. Abraham Schmitt stated it best in his book, Brilliant Idiot, when he said, My entire world collapsed at that moment. There was no other measure of a persons worth or intelligence than success in school. This is what happened to me. I was a happy, confident, fun-loving little kid until first grade. In first grade, everything changed for me. First grade was not fun and interactive, which is the perfect environment for visual learners like me. It was boring and repetitious. We sat still most of the day in rows and did drills in the various disciplines. I hated this method because it went against the way that I naturally learn. It was frustrating and boring for me to do this all day every day. I was a fun energetic kid who learned best by hearing, seeing, touching, and interacting with the material. I could not do any of that. I hated first grade, I felt like someone had pulled the rug from under me. How could kindergarten be so much fun and first grade be such a nightmare? This made no sense to me. Even worse, I couldnt keep up with this linear method and I always felt like I was struggling to stay up with the other kids. My self-image plummeted. I went from being the best student in kindergarten to being the worst student in first grade. I failed first grade and had to repeat it. So began my painful relationship with our K-12 public education system. This was supposed to be the launching pad for my academic career, and I fell flat on my face. Not liking elementary school or being able to keep up, I shut down and focused my attention on other things in class, and other people. I made a game out of trying to make other students laugh. If I had a really good day I could get them to laugh out loud and get themselves in trouble. My voice was the one that was just a little too loud. If a few students were talking in class, I would be the one that the teacher always caught because my voice was always a little bit louder than the other kids. My voice did not have a volume control. I think the only volume control my voice had was on and off. I enjoyed socializing in class, but this fun had consequences. I spent many lunches walking the track as punishment for talking in class, or writing 100 times, I will not talk in class. I had to write lines so often that I developed different techniques to finish quickly. I would try to make anyone in my class laugh, including the teacher, just to see if I could. At least now class was bearable.

{2} Freak Shoes

With my undiagnosed dyslexia, my growing self-doubt, and the lack of sympathy from my family, it is no wonder God thought it best that I have warped feet. My feet curved inward, severe enough that others noticed it when I walked. But it was worst whenever I ran in a game of freeze tag or soccermy feet would often hit the back of my leg when they were coming around to make the next step. It was an awkward sight to see. My parents took me to the doctor, who prescribed me a pair of orthopedic shoes. After prolonged use, these were supposed to straighten the curve in my feet. They were as stylish as orthopedic shoes can be, which is to say they were monstrous. Surely these shoes would help me in my efforts to blend in with my classmates. They were made of rough brown leather, had thick soles, laced up over my ankles, and were lined with metal. They were heavy and they hurt to wear. I looked at the soft rubber soled tennis shoes of normal kids with longing. Naturally, my classmates were discreet and open-minded about my monster shoes, making fun of me only when there werent more awkward children around. So, as if things werent bad for me already, now they were extra bad. I couldnt keep up with other kids in class because of my dyslexia. All day in school I was forced to sit still and be quiet, which I hated. I slurred my words or mispronounced words when I got nervous, and now to top it all off, I had to wear these huge freak shoes. Thank you world. I remember standing out from other kids on the playground. I remember the day two little girls came around from behind me as we were walking toward the playground for recess. One girl said, Whats wrong with your feet?, and the other added, You walk funny. I was crushed inside. Those mean second graders! What could I say? And what is it about children pointing out the obvious that makes the jab so cruel? I knew I walked funny, thats why I was wearing these freak shoes! But instead I said nothing. I drowned my misery in chocolate milk. I couldnt explain to those two girls that my mothers womb had been crowded and that my feet were pressed against her stomach while I was growing inside her, and that this was the reason I walked funny. Second grade was a rough year. To recap: kindergarten was an amazing experience, first grade I fell flat on my face and I had to repeat the grade, and now in second grade I was being ostracized for being the grade school Frankenstein. I hoped things would get better in third grade. In third grade I had Mrs. Butterfield as my teacher. She was a good teacher, but she didnt put up with any trouble caused by a third grader who couldnt sit still and was easily distracted. She had a punishment for everything. If I wasnt writing lines for talking in class, I was walking the track during lunch and recess for not sitting still. So, add these punishments to my academic career thus far and you have a picture of my early years in school. It wasnt looking any better until that day. Little did I know that morning, as I strapped on my shoes, pulled on my jacket, ready to face another day as a bottom dweller, that my life was about to change. It was the day our third grade class was taken out to one of the schools baseball fields to learn a game called kickball. This game is played a lot like baseball, but instead of a baseball and a bat, you use a big round ball that is rolled to kids who are up and they have to kick the ball and run to the bases. Our P.E teacher instructed us on the basics of the game as we all sat on the grass on a perfectly bright spring day. I loved P.E. because it meant that I did not have to sit still. Here I could run around as much as I wanted. The game is fairly straightforward. You kick the ball as

far as you can and run to the bases as fast as you can and hope that nobody catches the ball or tags you out. I could wrap my head around that. Our class was divided into two teams. Halfway through the first inning, kickball had quickly become a game our whole class loved. Everyone was yelling and cheering when someone on their team kicked the ball and ran for first base. My team started the game in the outfield and it wasn't until a couple innings later that I got a chance to kick that red ball. I must have been quite a sight as I stood over home base, a scrawny kid in bulky shoes. I was hoping to get a good kick between the fielders and to make it in time to reach first base. I knew this would be difficult, because my shoes made me clumsy. Or perhaps they just enhanced my natural clumsiness. I would have to run as fast as I could. The pitcher rolled the ball in a straight line towards me. I ran over to it and kicked it with all of my might. The rest is a blur. As I kicked the ball, it soared high into the air, and kept going, higher and higher, past the infielders. By the time it got to the outfielders, the ball was so high in the air that all they could do was watch as the ball sailed over their heads. The ball went so far that it landed on another playground on the other side of the field and rolled into a sandbox. It was an amazing kick that left our whole team jumping up and down and cheering as I ran around the bases and all of our base runners came home to more cheers and high-fives. Even some of the other teams members were jumping up and cheering for my long kick. By the time the outfielders had retrieved the red ball it had taken so long that some of the fielders were sitting down on the grass waiting. Apparently, winning a game is all thats needed to make you an instant hero. From that day forward, whenever we played kickball, kids would always pick me first. If my life were a movie, then at the end of the day I would discover that there had in fact been no metal in my shoes that day and that it had been me all along. Enter triumphant music. Fade to black. Alas, my life was not a movie. But it didnt matter to me. Blame it on performance-enhancing orthopedics, but this one moment changed the course of elementary school life. I dont think anyone knew that inside my prescription boots there lay a series of metal bars, which granted me the ability to out-kick every boy in my class. After that momentous day, kids stopped teasing me about how I walked and instead began to regard me as one of the class athletes. Talk about social climbing. I would continue to wear the special shoes for two more years. Each year the shoes got smaller and less noticeable. Soon the day came when I would wear them no more. Without the weight of my shoes my feet felt light on the ground. I remember my overwhelming joy at being able to run, unimpeded at last. I was free. This newfound love would earn me a peculiar distinction in 6th grade. Our school held a charity running event called a Jog-A-Thon in which students had family and friends sponsor us, committing a donation for each lap we would finish. Since I no longer wore my special shoes, I was a fast runner. I had so much fun running that I ran more laps than anyone else in the entire school. So much that I was honored by the principal with a plaque and I received a special award in the form of a donated chin-strap from the Los Angeles Rams football star Jim Youngblood. Looking back on this, it was a strange award to receive but at the time it felt like the best day of my young life. While it may look silly to recount these isolated events of my childhood, I believe these moments changed the way I think about weakness. In line with the idea of three-dimensional thinking, it is a useful exercise to think about whether your particular weakness has a dimension that you have not discovered. In my youth I considered my freak shoes a weakness, but they had another side to them that could be converted into strength. Likewise, dyslexia is considered a weakness or impediment. Indeed, people with dyslexia are protected under disability laws, in part because learning disabilities impede major life activities (like reading). But I think of

dyslexia as a consequence of three-dimensional thinking, which itself can be a strength if properly harnessed. This is why I tell people with learning disabilities (or anyone) to focus on their strengths. People tend to focus on our weaknesses. Some weaknesses will always be weaknesses. No one is going to cure your dyslexia. But you can change the way you approach it and I believe this is the formula followed by successful thinkers, innovators, and entrepreneurs who also happen to be dyslexic. There was a time in my life where I wished I wasnt different. Then I learned that being different means you stand out as an original. The people we most admire dont blend init is only in standing out that people shine the most. Sometimes this can be cringe-inducing (as with my awkward childhood) and you want to blend into the crowd because its safe. But Ive learned that if you want great success, you have to accept the risk of standing apart from the rest. Ive had my share of pain and failure, but also my share of success. As a dyslexic student, you struggle every day, which makes you tough. You become resilient. I think this is why so many dyslexic thinkers have an entrepreneurial spirit; they have to make their own way in life and create their own opportunities. There is no doubt that for most people, dyslexia is painful, I have lived it myself and I see it in others. But I think having some pain in life is good. It makes you more human and it changes how you interact with otherswhich can also be a strength. There is no great art or endeavor that does not somehow come from pain. Even great love exists in relation to the pain of lost love. There is beauty to this fragile balance and being able to accept both pain and strength has made my life richer.