Reframing Your Flaws: How Embracing Your Difference Can Make You Extraordinary8 min read

Tuesday mornings were the worst. Not because school was hard, but because Mr. Emeka never missed a 9:30 a.m. class, unless he was sick or pulled away for some urgent matter. And when he showed up, I knew I was bound to be embarrassed.

He had a habit of calling on me to read aloud from the textbook, right there in front of everyone. My crush sat two rows from the front. The boys I was trying to impress with my style were scattered across the room. And there I was, tongue-tied, anxious, fumbling through words like a baby learning to speak their first meaningful word. 

I never disappointed Mr. Emeka’s expectations. I always read poorly, stumbling over the simplest lines. In a world where intelligence was measured by how quickly you could read or write, I was the kid whose cranium couldn’t get past the first paragraph. Dyslexia punched straight through my pride every Tuesday morning (and some Wednesday afternoons). I was the laughing stock. The reference for other kids: don’t be like Ifeanyi—a good piece of advice notwithstanding.

It wasn’t just reading. It was spelling and exams. Everything about language felt like a battlefield I wasn’t equipped for. Hence, red ink adorned most columns in my report card.

And though I’ve grown, though I now write and speak with more confidence, that boy in the front of the class still lingers in my memory. A scar, not entirely healed.

But this is not all to my story.

You’re Not As Dumb As You Think

While I was the kid who couldn’t read, I was also the kid who could draw and write beautifully on pages. I was sought out by many, including my French teacher, who only tolerated my struggles with language because she needed something better than her doctor’s prescription handwriting to make her notes. Classmates and senior students paid for my elegant yet legible handwriting. New students were sent my way to borrow my notes if they were up to date. 

Good lord, I might’ve been a laughing stock on Tuesday and Wednesday but a freaking legend every other day. 

But, it’s heartbreaking to see that the way we treat others and measure their intelligence is often just a narrative framework—one we rarely question. We assume that if someone is terrible at one thing, they must be terrible at everything. And if they don’t meet our standard in one area, we start rewriting their entire story with red ink.  

This also shows in how we judge others. A quiet person becomes “proud,” a struggling student becomes “lazy,” and someone who thinks differently becomes “difficult.” We rarely stop to consider that they might just be operating on a different metric, one we’re not even measuring.

It’s part of why I believe no one is fit to be a judge of another, and academic exams aren’t the truest measure of our ability. You can be a brilliant musician and still suck at algebra. You might know how to repair engines blindfolded and be completely clueless about politics. You can excel in empathy, storytelling, or design and still struggle in a system that rewards speed, memory, or conformity.  

We’re all unevenly gifted—an idea scientifically backed in the book, Frames of Mind, by Howard Gardner. Yet, the tragedy isn’t in the unevenness, but in the assumption that one kind of sharpness fits all knives. That everyone must be like everyone else. 

Don’t Hate What You Are Now

Good mothers want the best for their kids. Mrs. Blessing is a good mother—a blessing in the form of my mother. She went the extra mile: bought me textbooks, and even hired a tutor to help me with English.

But fate, in its usual mischief, handed that job to the very man who made Tuesday and Wednesday feel like Judgment Day—Mr. Emeka.

I remember skipping those after-school lessons more times than I care to admit, only to get wiped on the ass during assembly the next day. Despite all the effort poured into my English lessons, the only progress I made was learning to pronounce “pronunciation” a little better. I still flunked English. But I got applause—and even a gift or two, for Art.

The English language and all it entails only began to make sense around age 15. Not because of another tutor or an epiphany moment, but because I decided to teach myself how to read by actually reading. A lot. Even when I didn’t understand a word of what I was reading, I kept going. Eventually, it clicked.

From college to date, self-education has been my greatest teacher. Skipped lectures. If I manage to attend, I refuse to take notes in the class because I am also a slow writer. I just sit mostly alone at the back and listen. This isn’t to say formal education is useless, it’s not. Go to school and attend class if you can. But sometimes, the things we think we can’t learn are simply things we haven’t tried learning on our own terms, some other personalised means.

Ironically, I don’t draw anymore. Any attempt to draw is an intentional effort to embarrass myself. Whereas the English language I once ran from is now the tool I use to build my career—as a writer,  photographer, and my graphic design interest. Life’s funny like that. It gives you a test on the subject you hate most, and somehow, that becomes your final project.

All I can say to anyone who is facing similar struggles or something relative is, don’t hate yourself; you’re growing. 

Growing Also Means Failing

Growth is many things, but never straightforward.

The first time I got hired to write for a tech blog, I managed to publish exactly one article before they kicked me off the team. And honestly, they were right. I stumbled across that piece about a year later. Good lord, it was poorly researched, verbally tasteless, and dry enough to dehydrate a reader by paragraph two.

This was around the same time I started writing for PAWNS. If you need further evidence of my early crimes against language, just scroll through my 2021 blog posts. As my editor, I bet Dick David found my drafts on Google Doc insufferable.

But fast forward to this piece, and I think we’d both agree it flows. The words now have a unity, a rhythm and a clear meaning. I can see the growth, so can you if you knew when I started. And that’s the point. No one starts out great. Whether you’re trying to write, code, love, or raise a child—your first attempts will almost always suck. And that’s purely growth.  

To define growth, it’s those moments when you keep going. When you didn’t quit, even when it was rough. And one day, you look back and laugh because now you see you’re no longer the boy who couldn’t read a paragraph of a passage. You can see how far you’ve come as a tailor, chef, friend, lover, a father or a mother. 

Conclusion: Your Difference Makes You  

Aliens are one of those rare ideas we humans seem to agree on, no matter where we’re from. We’ve always had names for them: angels, ghosts, spirits, fairies. The words might change, but the feeling is the same: Wonder. Admiration. Fear. Curiosity. And beneath all the adjectives is one simple truth—we are drawn to what is different.

For a long time, I thought being unable to read, spell, or speak properly made me broken.  But that forced me to build my own path, my style through storytelling, through writing, through photography, through finding meaning in the chaos. What made school hard eventually made my writing more human. More mine.

I’m grateful I didn’t read or learn like the other kids in school because they can’t tell this story—not exactly. And yes, there’s a smirk on my face as I say that.

Growth was never about fitting in. It’s about becoming more of yourself, despite your flaws, quirks, wrong spellings and all. So if you feel different, let that be your power. If you spot a difference in someone else, understand it. Honour it. Because what makes us aliens might just be what makes us extraordinary.

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