david goliath Essay

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Have you ever felt like you were different? Or feel like you didn’t fit in. I have. In some way, shape, or form we’ve all felt like we didn’t belong. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath, there is a whole chapter dedicated to people having to battle giants in their lives. For these people this giant is called dyslexia. Dyslexia has been around for a long time and has been defined in different ways. According to the U.S. National Institutes of Health, dyslexia is a learning disability that can hinder a person's ability to read, write, spell, and sometimes speak. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability in children and carries on throughout life. The seriousness of dyslexia can vary from mild to severe. Dyslexia has affected many people in America, but it shouldn’t stop us from doing great things, and it hasn’t stopped us. When I was eight years old I was diagnosed with dyslexia. I remember the day my parents told me. They tried explaining it to me with all the doctoral terminology, but as an eight year old with dyslexia I had no clue what they were saying. I just stared at them blankly and when they asked me if I understood I said, “Nope.” They just chuckled at me and said, “Sweetie you’re just different, and you’re just going to have to work a little bit harder than everybody else.” I didn’t know it then but I had come to find out that dyslexia would be one of the hardest things I would battle in my life. Elementary school was especially hard for me. I remember excruciating experiences of being called stupid or dumb by many kids at school because I had struggled so much with my reading. I especially remember fifth grade quite vividly. When it was time to do Language Arts my palms would get sweaty and I became very nervous because when we would read we would read “popcorn style”. I always prayed to God that I would never get picked and about a quarter of the way through the year I had decided to start reading ahead of the class. Someone would get picked and they’d begin to read the paragraph and in my head I would begin to read the next paragraph and I would scribble notes to myself all over the book so that way if I did get call I would be prepared and not look like an idiot. It worked. At the end of the school year when we had to return all our books the librarian wouldn’t accept my Language Arts book because I had written so much in it. My parents asked why I had done that and I explained to them why I had done what I did the laughed and said that they would buy the book. I still have that book. In Malcolm Gladwell's, David and Goliath, chapter four we learn about David Boies. He grew up in rural Illinois, where he was a different student. He graduated high school with “ragged” grades (108). After graduation he got married and moved to Southern California where he began to work in construction. He went to college mainly because his wife encouraged him to. But the small university he attended near Los Angeles happened to have one of the country's best debate programs. Boies traveled more than 20,000 miles to participate in debate tournaments. He left college early to start law school at Northwestern. He transferred to Yale, where he received his law degree. You wouldn’t know it due to all his success but he too battled dyslexia. On the very last paragraph before Gladwell begins to talk about Boies he writes, "You wouldn't wish dyslexia on your child. Or would you?" (102). You might if you were aware that Boies dedicated his success to his dyslexia, and so do Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, and Brian Grazer, the Hollywood mega producer. Examples like these are the main source of evidence Gladwell arranges for the claim that dyslexia might actually be a desirable trait. Difficulty reading is said to have forced Boies to compensate by developing skills of observation and memory, which he exploited in the courtroom. As many similarities I have with David Boies I can’t help but notice all the
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