If You Want Something Done Right, Do It Yourself

I have recently concluded that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

I have come to this conclusion after nearly four years of struggling in the public high school system and having to rely on other people to do things for me. A recent example comes to mind: I hold a pen very awkwardly (which might be just the way my spastic fingers move) and experience a lot of pain in my hand when I write, especially when I write a lot. This may be related to the awkward pen grip or the CP. Or both. I suspect they're all interconnected. Anyway, this is why I use an Alpha-Smart (technically a Neo, made by Alpha-Smart) to type notes at school, and it has been my savior ever since I started using one around third grade. However, the Alpha-Smart's one pitfall is it can't write anything remotely mathy, such as complicated algebra problems, square roots, and all that other fun stuff that you learn in advanced high school math classes. Nor can it do subscripts or superscripts, which I have found to be a huge problem in chemistry this year. So I am supposed to have a note-taker for both classes. Fine. Except my note-taker in math has kind of messy handwriting and she often forgets to date her notes, which leads to me failing the notebook checks. And my note-taker in chem seems to have forgotten she's my note-taker at all. I keep trying to remind her, but it's difficult when I don't need all chem notes, just the parts that I can't type on my Alpha-Smart. I tried relying on memory for awhile and that didn't work out so well. So I've recently taking to handwriting all my chem notes, because it's just too difficult to handwrite the parts I can't type and type the rest and try to piece them all together later. This has led to tremendous pain in my hand, but hey, at least I have notes now! Of course, it doesn't seem to have improved my grades any, but that's a different story...

So. If I want something done right, I have to do it myself. Rather difficult when you have a physical disability. But, hey, I'm not complaining! It's just one of the many pitfalls of the special education system which really does nothing at all. Actually, I shouldn't say that, because I have friends who've had it worse off with the Special Ed Dept. than I have. But they do very little to correct the problems I actually have, which are few. But hey, that's the school system for you! (Note: I will probably be ranting on this frequently. Be prepared.)