Week 31 - Wasps and brain detectives 🐝

Hi, my name’s Rich.

I joined Made Tech on Monday as a designer and have spent this week onboarding with some super-smart people.

The Beginning

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the bath, wondering whether I needed to wash my eyes. I don’t think I need to tell you that it didn’t go so well.

But it's this sort of questioning (questionable?) behaviour that made a career in design attractive to me, and a desire to be of use to people that led me to the public sector, and here to Made Tech! Though it hasn’t stopped getting me in trouble. I recently lifted the lid off a wasp’s nest in the ground. Just to see, y’know.

Wasps are very fast.

Serendipity

Two things are happening this week. Firstly this is the week I get to write a post. It’s also dyslexia awareness week in the UK. These might seem unrelated, but what connects them of course is me!

I discovered that I’m dyslexic earlier this year. I noticed some difficulties in the second year of my MA and I was referred for an assessment. It came back and, “Yep, turns out you are”.

It seemed to explain some things, and it was a relief to know there is something to be addressed. But the reality is that the work is ahead of me. To learn to work with my brain instead of against it, and to take advantage of some apparent perks.

Which, among others, can include:

• Imagination

• Persistence

• Pattern recognition

• Holistic thinking

• Strong visual memory

• Good spatial awareness

• Good intuition

I like this from Jim Rokos:

“Because our memory process is different, more eccentric, triggered by different things and distracted by others, we are forever being detectives and trying to figure things out from fragments of evidence the whole time - which just builds on our creative side.”

Build, grow

At Made Tech I hope to not just grow but to build myself, in a way. I am at best a house of sticks, and the more I can learn how my dyslexic brain works, and use that to inform and improve my work, the stronger I can build my foundations.

Dyslexia awareness week runs this week, from the 4th to the 10th of October.

Please have a look at the links below to find out more about the struggles and advantages of being dyslexic.

bdadyslexia.org.uk/support-us/awareness-events/dyslexia-awareness-week

Madebydyslexia.org

I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone, I hope you all have a great weekend!

Rich