Grace Riegel: Dyslexia, Self-Advocacy, and Redefining Success at University

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Brooke

We have something a little different here today because we have a personal friend of mine who I grew up with and absolutely Adore grace. I'm thrilled to have you as we begin. What is your campus Chronicles story?

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Grace Riegel

My campus Chronicles story is a little different and different than I ever saw it happening when I was a senior in high school So I had left my senior year of high school and went for a two-week trip to Los Angeles, California And I was going to start my acting career I had auditions and interviews and callbacks while I was in LA and I was fully ready to jump into the film industry and Then I realized I was 19 years old and I wanted to have life experience I wanted to travel I wanted to be able to grow up in acting and do more than play The funny best friend or the girl next door So I said what is something that would give me? Experience and I joined the military. I love this So experience and it and it has been I've been enlisted in the Air Force for six years now six years completely in October and That set up my path for all of the experience that I wanted but it made my early 20s very interesting I did not go down any path that any career counselor had within their realm of imagination I paved my own way and After I completed my initial military training. I'm a member of the Air National Guard So I did have the freedom to go to school as well I was a 21 year old freshman So I felt out of place and had to make my own way going to school during a global pandemic Being a super extroverted person but trying to make it work and I ended up getting a job offer my freshman year of college

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Grace Riegel

So I left college went and worked full-time for the Ohio National Guard in media and journalism And now I'm at the end of my contract and on my way to be a 25 year old college freshman

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Brooke

I'm so proud of you. Okay you guys so you already see why I Absolutely adore this woman because she tells stories with such beautiful heart and such beautiful description And that's likely from our background in theater And one of the reasons I wanted to bring grace on today was she touched my heart with a speech that she did about dyslexia

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(Music)

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Brooke

I'm not as educated around dyslexia as I would like to be Grace let's dive into it. Why did you choose to discuss dyslexia and learning disabilities as your Miss Ohio talent?

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Grace Riegel

I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in the third grade and I remember

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Grace Riegel

Not understanding at all and I kind of dive into this in my Miss Ohio talent That I couldn't comprehend what a diagnosis was at nine years old

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Grace Riegel

I knew that I was different. I knew that I felt uncomfortable in the classroom, but when somebody came to me with dyslexia

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Grace Riegel

You're just putting a label on it, but it didn't mean anything to me at that young age That's so painful to be labeled Absolutely, and it was It was a double-edged sword because to receive a diagnosis is to receive a pathway to success If I didn't know what it was that was making me different I wouldn't have known what help to seek out But then at the same time there was no one else in my school that I knew of at the time That had dyslexia. So as far as I knew I was the only person in the world with a brain that works this way

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Brooke

I can imagine that was so isolating

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Grace Riegel

It was and especially at nine years old and then going through school at 10 11 12 Like those are core years where all you want to do is bond with your peers

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Brooke

Yes, and you feel such an immense desire to fit in Absolutely

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Grace Riegel

So now as an adult and living with learning disabilities my entire life. I will never outgrow them I will always have a brain that works the way it does It meant the world to me to go back and let students know that the way that their brain works is different But it's perfect

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Grace Riegel

And so dyslexia is the way that my brain processes information

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Grace Riegel

And it's not slow

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Grace Riegel

It's not backwards. It's not upside down. It's different

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Grace Riegel

And to a cookie cutter school system that expects students to perform in a certain way It was difficult

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Grace Riegel

So my brain stores its information differently and it also will read So the way that I explain it is if i'm reading a page My eyes are going to move faster Then my brain will process the information and that's when we get into some of the myths about dyslexia That it's reading backwards or seeing letters switched It's just that my brain is running a marathon to keep up with what my eyes are doing

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Brooke

Wow, that's a beautiful way to explain it because it's so tangible. It's so visual

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Grace Riegel

Absolutely,

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Grace Riegel

and i've been able to help a lot of students who are in that same space as I was at nine years old and they Can understand running from gym class, but maybe you don't see where you're going And they're like wait, that's exactly how I feel and i'm like, I know like me too Still to this day. I find myself having to reread paragraphs in books because I will read to get to the end of the page, but I wasn't reading for comprehension

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Brooke

Going into being a 25 year old university freshman, which is so courageous that i'm so proud of you How do you think this information that you have now? About the way that you process will inform how you study how you treat yourself

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Grace Riegel

it has been such A period of grace to learn about my disability and i'm continuously learning more about my disability every single year and In high school. It was very very difficult by the time I got to college when I did go to balding lawless university in Ohio I was able to use accommodation So I had teachers that we talked one-on-one About my disability and we were able to formulate a plan with the school that worked best for me So on some projects I did get a little extra time on some testing. I had extended time. I would have copies of notes From my lectures because it was hard for me to I couldn't write

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Grace Riegel

And listen at the same like you were either going to get it written notes But then I would go back and reference them and have no idea what they meant Or I could sit in class and absorb the information

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Brooke

And knowing that gives you such an upper hand or such an edge And how to support yourself because if you don't have the words to communicate what you need You're not going to get that support that you're seeking and that's so unfortunate And that you oftentimes do have to be your own self-advocate How did you learn how to self-advocate because I know that can be uncomfortable To to broach that for the first time particularly because you were so young

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Grace Riegel

I had an extreme advantage being as extroverted as I am and I think I got a lot of that from Growing up in theater growing up on stage and I just i've always loved talking talking. She does. She loves to talk in a beautiful way But I was very lucky to have a mom who is an educator and when I received my diagnosis She knew that she was not going to be able to be in every classroom with me And it was very important to her that I was able to talk to my teachers So even at nine years old, I was going to my 504 and my IOP meetings And discussing with my teachers what I was feeling at nine At nine and that translated into having that skill set my entire life in high school I was going up to my teachers with my binder carrying my 504 plan opening up to section three Paragraph a and saying due to the americans with disabilities act. I need you to give me a copy of the notes So it wasn't just knowing how I feel. It was knowing what I was entitled to

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Brooke

That's a powerful point

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Brooke

And that's incredibly

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Grace Riegel

powerful incredible because I had some teachers now We think about what our educators are required to do in the classroom They are wearing so many hats and carrying out so many different jobs just to teach you how to do math That it couldn't be their fault to not know how grace regal's brain works But for grace regal to go in there and offer a kind but firm Reminder on this is what I need to succeed. I have a lot of teachers that were able to then meet me where I am

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Brooke

What does a kind but firm request sound like?

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Grace Riegel

There was some balance in learning how to do this Correctly, but there's a lot of times that I wanted to walk up to my teachers and be like i'm so sorry But I need to let you know That this just isn't working for me Oh

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Brooke

starting with the i'm so sorry to bolster is such a uniquely feminine thing, isn't it?

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Grace Riegel

I think it is It made me feel more comfortable because i'm going to a person who's in a place of power and a place of authority And well, I don't want to be a burden And then I remembered how much of a burden it was on my education to live without the accommodations I was owed And I found a lot of power in walking up with the full knowledge of what I was owed And presenting that in a way that was excuse me, ma'am

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Grace Riegel

I know that this is how My accommodation should run in this classroom I would really love to have a further conversation with you after class. But right now this is what I need. Thank you Thank you

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Grace Riegel

And that worked with a soft smile with a firm tone and with the knowledge to back what I was saying That's how I got to a successful route in education

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Brooke

Something is coming up for me. It's with late diagnosis and we hear this a lot So many people suspect that perhaps they were missed or they perhaps interpret the world or stimuli differently But they're not Formally diagnosed if somebody suspects something What is their first step?

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Grace Riegel

So my mother and i'm so lucky to have the mom that I do in the situation that I was in But she now owns her own business where she has a dyslexia screener and consultant So she has students that will come to her and she will screen them To see if they have dyslexia Or if they're within that realm So adhd runs right in line with dyslexia a lot of times we see them coming together as best friends

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Brooke

Yes, it's like celiac disease and um dairy allergy. They're they're all linked and all together

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Grace Riegel

Yes, they are Well, it's interesting how like you don't you don't get away with just one or

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Brooke

no You can never have just one. It's also like autoimmune diseases. They pair up

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Grace Riegel

Absolutely. So before my mom had the job that she had I was the reason she discovered what dyslexia was so to speak to going undiagnosed my mother went through all of education Undiagnosed and she then decided that that was going to be her career path Because she didn't ever want a student to sit in her classroom and feel the way that she felt not knowing what it was not Understanding fully why she felt alone but knowing that she felt behind and no one was going to do that in her classroom When I got into the third grade, my mom said oh my gosh I've seen this before I lived this before why is this happening to my daughter too? So that she started talking to pediatricians to say This is where she's struggling. She's turning in all of her tests 20 minutes behind the other students She's not totally understanding the books and we were noticing that If you were to tell me a story if brook and I were to have a conversation I could fully comprehend and repeat back all of that I could tell you every single thing that we talked about if it was musical theater and I watched a show I could tell you about the plot and the history of the characters and their character development and I understood what was happening if I read the script

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Grace Riegel

I No clue what this show is about like I read all of the words from start to finish

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Grace Riegel

But I Maybe didn't collect much there.

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Brooke

It was like reading greek Absolutely.

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Grace Riegel

It was just it was words and I knew what the words meant but there wasn't that picture of reading There wasn't it's not as enjoyable and I do enjoy reading

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Grace Riegel

But it wasn't that experience of like understanding the flow of the story because I was more worried about how the consonants work together to form the word than the Definition of the word and how the word works with the other words in the sentence to create a

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Brooke

picture And you can't be present and you can't have that mental picture to your point if that's your day-to-day experience So if somebody is experiencing like you said turning test in late if they're reading things But it's not necessarily clicking and the way that other people describe those are signs

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Brooke

Absolutely.

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Grace Riegel

So it doesn't mean that if you're experiencing those things for sure it is dyslexia But those were a lot of the things that we were noticing when I was in third grade and that's when we're you know Starting to have silent reading time. That's when we're starting to maybe do multiplication facts Starting to have work on your own in classroom homework assignments, and I always just felt Five steps behind everybody. I would always look around the classroom and see people Maybe three pages ahead of me and I had still just opened the book

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Brooke

How has the public and the people that you've broached this topic with what has the response been like

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Grace Riegel

It has been overwhelming and i'm so happy to be able to stand on the miss ohio stage And have people come up to me after the show and say I have dyslexia. I was just diagnosed And connect over that because that's what I was missing as a young student was somebody else telling me Wait, I also understand what you're going through and throughout the years as you know Other kids were getting diagnosed and I was placed into some like additional education into some 504 classes I had like started to connect with other students. Um, I think it was bella thorne on disney channel released a commercial talking about her dyslexia and I felt Seen you felt validated i'm sure Oh, absolutely. I loved bella thorne. I loved shake it up. So that felt so like I'm not alone and now to serve as that representative who Turned a learning disability into a career in creative writing

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Grace Riegel

It's a wonderful

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Brooke

feeling

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Brooke

How does your dyslexia Contribute to your ability to tell stories beautifully to tell stories creatively. How is it your edge you may say

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Grace Riegel

I always say I am a wonderful Storyteller And a very bad speller. I I love that And two things can exist at one time. I love Formulating the story. I love painting the picture. That's the art form that has always spoken to me

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Grace Riegel

But then when it's time to hit the paper

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Grace Riegel

It's a battle to try and get it to look the way it looks in my brain So I have learned that I just need to dive in and I need to I call it. I just I write ugly I get the thoughts on the paper and I just I write And I love everything is spelled wrong and everything is underlined in red And there's sometimes that you know, microsoft word doesn't even know what I am trying to type But I just get the story out

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Grace Riegel

Then I can go back and edit then I can slow down and you know, maybe replace a few words Fine-tune my paper, but that's how I get the story That I know i'm able to

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Brooke

tell

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Brooke

What a process and permission to give yourself the opportunity to do it in the way that works for you Without judging yourself without feeling shame without feeling guilt Absolutely, brooke. I love that

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Brooke

Allowing so much permission And it's so juicy because we don't give ourselves permission to see and be and do and feel The way that we need to feel because we feel that we're not going to be Understood or that we might be judged to your point But just giving yourself the grace to say this is how I have to do it for me That's beautiful

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Grace Riegel

Oh, thank you.

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Brooke

It truly is what are Some of the other coping mechanisms or tools that you use To help ensure that you're able to tell stories to show up the way that you want to show up And yet use this as an opportunity for growth not as a

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Grace Riegel

setback

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Grace Riegel

It has absolutely been an opportunity for growth and if you would have told me as a young student that I would do anything involving writing I wouldn't have believed you but it is always where my passions have been So like you said allowing myself the permission to write the way that I need to write Um, we have a very big rule in the office that I work in that my boss is not allowed to stand over my shoulder when I write Because he'll do that and like want to collaborate and be like, what if we put this sentence here? And i'm like, you cannot look at all of the red lines on my paper. Like let me Get it all out and then we can collaborate I make sure that I always always always Record my interviews and i've even been able to utilize technology and ai programs to create Transcripts of the interviews that I write so that way I can see it on paper and start to cut out The actual words in a document and place those quotes into my stories

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Brooke

That's incredible and it's a really good representative of i'm using this as a tool to assist myself Oh, i'm loving what you're saying grace another question that's coming up for me as you're educating me in this realm Where i'm a bit uneducated as well

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Brooke

As far as dyslexia and its portrayal in the media because I know we both have a profound interest in media What do you think popular culture gets wrong about the portrayal of dyslexia in film tv's media?

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Grace Riegel

There are a lot of myths about dyslexia and I talk about this all the time in my interviews or when i'm meeting with families or mentees that have just found out that they have dyslexia and

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Grace Riegel

There's so much that exists but there's reasons behind every myth if that makes sense There's a little nugget of truth in them i'm sure Absolutely. So with the processing time, like I said, my eyes are moving faster than my brain can process what's on the page That's how we get the misconception that dyslexia is seeing things upside down or seeing things move around the page And that's not true. It's my eyes moving around the page faster than my brain is following them We also have a misconception that there are more males with dyslexia than there are females So a lot of times females will go undiagnosed and this is existent in multiple learning disabilities because of the way That we are likely to handle feeling different

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Grace Riegel

so More likely than not again. This is a stereotype. So this isn't always how it plays out But a young boy who feels different in class Might take on the role of the class clown might start acting up might i'm too cool for school I'm not going to do my homework and he gets a diagnosis because we can see Something's wrong. He's compensating for something because he made noise he made noise and Women are more likely to stay up until 3 a.m And just get the assignment done even if it hurts we are more likely to Study the entire weekend and not hang out with our friends. Just so nobody knows we're different We're more likely to not ask questions ask for extra time ask for the notes because I just don't want to be an inconvenience

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Grace Riegel

And that was the biggest thing in being an advocate for me, especially for self-advocacy

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Grace Riegel

Was that I need to teach young girls that it is okay to ask for what

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Brooke

you need

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Brooke

It does not make you wrong. It does not make you selfish. It does not make you bold It does not make you problematic. That's a humongous story I carried that if I were to say I needed this that if I were to say this isn't okay with me That made me a problem and somehow less worthy and somehow less lovable And what we said earlier about saying sorry That's another one I needed to bolster it to feel like I wasn't problematic to feel that I could still be lovable That I could still be good

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Brooke

And the way that you're describing this makes tremendous sense about the presentation in males And in females so grace You're very smart. I have to ask you a challenging question Okay, if you had to give and I love this because you're going into your into your freshman year Three pieces of advice for university students. What would those three pieces of advice be?

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Grace Riegel

number one ask questions

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Grace Riegel

Listen to grace Send the emails follow up Find friends and ask them questions That is my biggest my biggest thing in anywhere that you are in life, but especially college ask questions My second piece of advice would be join communities

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Grace Riegel

Find a club that is interesting to you. I joined a sorority. I am a sister of alpha gamma delta And that was a wonderful outlet for me to find other people on campus and connect with people the beautiful thing about a sorority I was able to Connect with girls who had totally different interests totally different majors different life paths and we were able to share so much And then my third piece of advice

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Grace Riegel

Is to be authentic There were so many moments in my college career and in my career my time as an adult That there were certain ways. I feel I needed to act in certain rooms Or there were certain ways. I wanted to carry myself to be perceived a certain way

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Grace Riegel

And the most important thing you can do Is be you Whether that's wearing your favorite outfit that somebody else might not like to your lecture Or doing your hair in a way that isn't popular on tick tock because it feels cute to you You're going to thrive in your college years as you

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Brooke

I put my hand over my heart because the third point touched me so deeply in terms of feeling the compulsive need to show up different Based on who you were around and where you were and if I could rewind my time and go back to university again That is the biggest thing I would change. I would stop putting up with things that I was not okay with I would say no more often I would tell people when something was hurting me And I would be authentic to my ethics my morals and my values Yes What are you most looking forward to as we start to wrap up here about going back as a 25 year old freshman? What are you most excited for?

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Grace Riegel

I am so excited for every aspect of furthering my education again I just We don't talk about how hard College is for an 18 year old a 19 year old It is a big jump From living with your parents from going to high school from having everyone. I know that I grew up in a small town So having everyone that i've known since preschool

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Grace Riegel

And then being in a totally new group of people So i'm very excited to now Be 25 years old to have traveled the world to have grown so much been on military activations and

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Grace Riegel

Really had a full career

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Grace Riegel

I have a much better understanding of who I am Of how the world works of what it is that I want to study. So props to Every 18 19 year old that is jumping into college. You are doing hard things

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Brooke

And props to everyone who's a non-traditional student too Who goes back and says I studied something that wasn't right for me. I need to change my major whatever it is To your point you also have a much better indicator of the world that you actually want to see And the world that you want to live in because we can talk all day long about being the change But until we know how the world works We don't know how to show up for ourselves and we don't know how to show up for other people absolutely

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Brooke

If somebody wants to learn more about your advocacy, where do they go?

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Grace Riegel

So I am extremely active on social media. You can follow me at at grace.regal I also have a pageant account And it's linked within grace.regal But I talk a lot about my community service and my work with spelling out dyslexia my community service initiative

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Brooke

Grace it has been so amazing to have you on the podcast today It's a topic that I needed further education on and i'm just so delighted that you put this resource And this information into the hands of people who need it Thank you for sharing your insights your knowledge your personal stories and for being so vulnerable with us

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Grace Riegel

So luigi, thank you so much for having me. I had a great time talking with you

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Brooke

And thank you so much everyone for joining us on another episode of the campus chronicles podcast