1st Percentile

Ok, so I recently went in for some evaluation for some “slowness” issues… the school (or should I say, the dean) wanted me to check this out because they didn’t understand why I excelled so highly in the lab but struggled with some coursework. So, I finally had time to do this when I was done with classes. Most of this makes me laugh, so please, laugh with me.

As it turns out, I scored in the 1st percentile (this is not good- actually, you can’t score any lower!) on the Nelson Denny Reading test. They call this “severely impaired”. Is this making any of you laugh? I’m working on my PhD but am severely impaired in my reading speed and comprehension. Apparently, most people can read all the passages and answer all the questions in the given amount of time… I cannot. They have to score me based on the timed test. However, when given as much time as I needed to finish the test, I scored in the high average range for comprehension- this means I get it, but I’m slow… 1st percentile slow. But this is not a reading disorder; I was also slow in other simple, timed tasks arithmetic (by the Woodcock-Johnson III- a cognitive abilities test). Ironically, I did much better in the more complex tasks compared to simple ones… hmmm…

The other thing that they pointed out is that I don’t change gears well. I was also “severely impaired” in this area. This test was really hard. The doctor read 3 letters out loud, and then asked me to count backwards by 3’s for a certain amount of time (3, 9 or 18 seconds). After that I had to recall the letters that she told me before I had started counting. Honestly, this was nearly impossible for me.

Overall, her recommendation was to take breaks between things to help in task changes. As for the slow reading, she partly attributed that to just an overall slowness, but the other part as a personality flaw/strength. You see, I read slowly so that I comprehend everything. And I mean everything. As I read I connect what I’m reading to all other things that I know so that I can make connections better and recall information better when I need to. I don’t think this is bad, but it means I have to put a lot more time into reading at work compared to my peers. The good news is that I retain the information for a very long time… maybe like the poem that I memorized in high school that I recently wrote about…

You’ll be happy to know that I was in the 97th percentile for vocabulary and well above average in many other areas like “verbal abstract reasoning” and “funds of information”… if that means anything or makes you feel more comfortable with the scientists of the future. But I still need to look up who Marie Curie was… I missed that one.