Dr. Douglas Sims: Dyslexic Scientist

Dr. Douglas Sims is a scientist, entrepreneur, author, and learning disability advocate. Dr. Sims discusses their experience in school with dyslexia and ADHD, and shares how they harnessed their strengths to reach success. 

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Lauren Clouser:

Welcome to the LDA Podcast, a series by the Learning Disabilities Association of America. Our podcast is dedicated to exploring topics of interest to educators, individuals with learning disabilities, parents and professionals to work towards our goal of creating a more equitable world. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the LDA podcast. I'm here today with Dr. Douglas Sims, a scientist, entrepreneur, author, and learning disability advocate. Dr. Sims, thank you so much for being here today.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here, of course.

Lauren Clouser:

So I wanted to give you a chance to tell us a bit more about yourself.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

Yeah, I've been out in industry for quite a while. I'm also now in academia as a dean at one of the larger colleges in the US. And I started this journey of self awareness and self acceptance of my dyslexia and ADHD many, many years ago. And you know, I watched people like myself struggle, and I struggled quite a bit as well. But I'm a big-time proponent of supporting those people and letting them know that your disability does not mean you're disabled. You're very capable of doing great, wonderful things. And that's why I'm here today to help promote that, still.

Lauren Clouser:

Absolutely. And would you be able to tell us more about your own experience with dyslexia and ADHD growing up, especially in the school system, and how that impacted you?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

Oh, yes. I mean, my dyslexia and ADHD, ADHD really compounds your dyslexic issues by an order of magnitude due to your hyperness. But it started early on. I mean, my earliest memories, and I have a near photographic memory for interactions and conversations, not reading a book and memorizing words on it, but it started all the way back to kindergarten. I remember in kindergarten being ridiculed by the teacher and other students, as well as first grade, second grade, third grade, all the way through to my senior year. It impacted me huge. My biggest advocate was my mother, who would go in and battle for me, of course.

And we're talking special education programs of the 70s and the 80s. I graduated from high school in 1989. Yeah, it was difficult, it was hard to hide. And then ADHD made it worse because you're hyper. You blurted things out quite a bit. Teachers have a lot of students to deal with, even in a special education class of the 80s where I was in self-contained, where 8 to 12 kids were generally in those classes for English and social studies, math, whatever it was. And they had, you know, sometimes their patients would ultimately be pushed to the limit. Yeah, it was difficult.

I mean, I was told as a young kid I would never finish school. I'm talking elementary all the way through high school. I would never graduate. I would never get into college. I would be pumping gas for a living. I'm glad that didn't come true because I'd be unemployed today because there are no gas station attendants. But I was also told I'd be a ditch digger from teachers and adults.

And it's funny. My PhD is in environmental geochemistry, so I know how to dig a ditch really, really well. So I guess that did come true. But I'm just really good at it now, and I get paid a little more, but it was difficult. And moving from public school to higher education was a massive shock because there's a hard break between a public education IEP, which is what I had, and a higher education Disability Resource Center. So when you get into higher ed and you're doing a university degree, I got beat up pretty hard the first couple years.

And I like to say that UNLV gave me a year of sabbatical when I was expelled for bad grades. But by then I had a girlfriend that became my wife that became my advocate and started to help me learn how to learn. Because when I graduated from high school, reading…I wasn't able to read very well at all. Nevertheless. And so going to college was a massive culture shock.

And if it wasn't for my girlfriend, my wife, I probably would never finish my university experience. So I'm very grateful to have her still today as my advocate, my champion.

Lauren Clouser:

Fantastic. Well, I'm sorry that that was your experience in early school that it's got to be so tough to constantly hear that.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

It is. I mean, I think teachers have a lot that they have to be responsible for. It's an onslaught for them. So I understand. You know, I think things have changed a lot over the last 40 years since I basically left public school.

And I'm grateful for that. But it was pretty tough. And it wasn't just teachers. It was, you know, adults outside the school that were also, you know, not as supportive as maybe they should be.

Lauren Clouser:

Yeah, definitely. Well, I'm so glad you brought up the point, too, of the difference between having an IEP in high school and then transitioning to college. That is still something that can be really tough.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

And I'm a big supporter of our DRC, where I work as a college of Southern Nevada, we have a great DRC system. We have great leadership. I don't always agree with them, but I support them because I'm very sensitive to students with learning disabilities. But there is a hard break because IEP doesn't come over. It has to be interpreted by the college or university. And then you have to be your own advocate. Your parents have zero say in higher education, even if you pay for it.

Ultimately, DRC is there to advocate for you, but you have to advocate for yourself.

Lauren Clouser:

Yeah, that's a really good point. Well, and it sounds like your girlfriend at the time, now wife, was able to help you discover your strengths. Could you tell us a little bit more about that process, how you were able to figure out how you learned and harness those strengths?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

That's great, what you said, figure out how I learn with dyslexia. I learn in pictures. I'm very visual, is what we say. Reading a passage in a book, my wife can interpret it very well. When I read it, I see pictures.

Well, she sees words. So she was able to show me that, you know, use your strength, which is both my pictures that I see as I read, but also my dyslexia or my ADHD, I was able to weaponize against my dyslexia. That's my superpower. So I was able to work longer. I had to. I had to work longer and harder. And sometimes people don't like it when I say we have to work harder than others, but we do. To succeed, we have to be able to work longer and harder than our peer who doesn't have those challenges.

Again, dyslexia may be classified as a disability, but we're not disabled. We just have to find that superpower that makes us successful and then use it. And even when I left the university after earning my higher education, my master's and PhD, and went out into industry, I had to work harder than my colleagues. But back in school, my girlfriend said, you got to use those, and she would help break down and teach me how to write properly.

And I will be honest. I mean, without her, I wouldn't be able to write as well as I do. And I write pretty well, but I still have dyslexia. It doesn't go away. It's with me for life. 

And I have to understand that when I write something, I have to make sure it's clear, because that's the only way we can really communicate with our supervisors or subordinates and our colleagues. But yeah, my wife, she definitely saved me by teaching me how to weaponize my ADHD against my dyslexia and understand that dyslexia, again, is there for life. She's actually a pediatric neuropsychologist, by the way. I like to make a joke that she did her dissertation on me, but it wasn't really on me, it was something else. But yeah, she basically saved me there.

Lauren Clouser:

Yeah, it sounds like she was really supportive and helped you to get to where you are, which is what I wanted to touch on too. How did your strengths help you in becoming a scientist? Could you tell us about what led you into that field and then also how you became an entrepreneur after?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

Oh, yeah, that's interesting because writing wasn't my strength, of course, but I always loved the analytical side of things and school, so I gravitated to what I liked. And that's the key when you're in school. You’ve got to gravitate not just to what you like, but also what you're good at. And as a scientist, when I'm doing my geochemistry, I'm able to, again, think in pictures, where my colleagues think in words. So that led me down that road and I really enjoyed what I did because I was able to do it very well and ultimately went down that path of what I liked, what I was good at, and would I have liked to have been a poet? Yes, but, you know, I'm not that creative. But doing geochemistry, looking at the environment, how it's polluted and how we can clean it up, that became something that excited me.

And, you know, I don't know if my wife sees it as exciting as I do, but she looks at pediatric neuropsychology as exciting. And I'm kind of bored with that, but. But I was able to definitely enjoy what I did. And when you do chemistry, thinking in pictures is a great visual side. But yeah, that's how I ended up going down that path. And it wasn't easy. It was a lot of long nights and stress and failures.

And whenever someone says to me, how do you feel when you fail? Well, failure is the best teacher. And understanding that failure is part of learning. If you succeed every time, you don't really learn. But failure teaches me more than anything else in life. 

Lauren Clouser:

That's such a great perspective to have too.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

It's hard. When you have a PhD or any skill or ability, failure hurts. It hurts in here. And then how I got into industry, when I left university, I was able to get a job early in my education. I had to work while going to school. I didn't have money so I had to have a job. And I lucked into a job at a great engineering firm that's now gone. They were very large and got bought up during the buy up of companies in the 90s. 

And when I was working, I had a lot of skill. I would work again longer than my colleagues or my supervisors. And eventually I realized I would do better going on my own, which I did do in 1997. And then the ability to work 20 hour days, which I don't recommend, but that's what I ultimately did, allowed me to build a company from scratch while I worked a day job and then started my company on the side and took 10 months to quit my day job about a month after my first child was born. So my wife is really forgiving, or maybe she was too tired to argue when I said I'm quitting my day job and then go on to build a company. And my ADHD was the key to success. Now did I make mistakes due to dyslexia? Of course, but that's where I had double, triple and quadruple checks so that it didn't affect the product. And working 20 hour days is definitely a key.

But yeah, that's how I went out on my own and I loved it, built a pretty big company, very successful and then eventually wanted to go back and help the next generation of scientists become scientists and sold my company and ended up in academia about 15 years ago.

Lauren Clouser:

So to talk a little bit more about something that you touched on earlier was that learning disabilities are lifelong. So could you tell us a little bit more about how your dyslexia and ADHD impact you in adulthood, either in the workplace or just in your day to day life?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

I'll touch upon dyslexia first and ADHD. Dyslexia impacts me today. I'm a dean, so I oversee one of the biggest academic units at the College of Southern Nevada. So I have to be very careful how I write to make sure I'm writing properly because everyone's at the top of their field for ability to communicate. And so, you know, communication in industry, including academia, is all written. I try to communicate with my voice as much as possible, but I still have to write. And so when I'm communicating out through emails, you have to make sure that everything's proper, your structures of sentences, grammar. Because even today people still judge.

To be honest, people are still judgy of your writing skills, especially at the level we're at. So I have to be very careful because once that judginess comes out and it never goes away, you can be 30 or 90, people are still going to judge based on your ability to communicate. So that definitely impacts it. I'm very careful. If I have to write something I don't throw it out quick, I'm going to write it in Word, go through slowly, edit, make sure it's proper before I put it into an email. The ADHD, that's another story. The ADHD affects both professional and personal. In the professional world, I want to throw things out as soon as I can.

And that's where you have to pull back because if you do that, you make mistakes and that's where errors are seen. And something that a lot of people don't get. ADHD can affect relationships because we're moving a million miles an hour in our brains and want to throw things out verbally that could affect other people. And I have again impacted professional and personal relationships. If they don't understand that the ADHD causes us to talk sometimes over them, we're thinking three to four or five sentences ahead. And sometimes what we say isn't necessarily connected to the conversation. And that's something my wife pointed out some years ago, that that's why this occurred with this individual at work. And even as a business owner where I had a pretty sizable organization, I had to learn to be softer at times and not blurt out what's going through my head.

But yeah, that's, that's definitely a detriment at times when I'm communicating with people. But yeah, it's, it's still there. Again, they don't go away. You have to learn to manage, but you're never going to manage them into non-existence.

Lauren Clouser:

Yeah, that's such a great point. Well, and you touched on this in your answer, but what do you wish more people knew about dyslexia and adhd? If there's a couple of things that you could, some myths you could bust, what would you let people know?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

Oh, dyslexia. Again, it's classified as a disability. It. We're not disabled or  not capable of doing lots of things. And dyslexia is like a spectrum. Everyone that says, oh, you have dyslexia, Doug. So you see letters backwards well, that's just one area. That's not what I have issues with.

Mine is more structure and logic, which affects writing, reading, math, and, I think that really, I don't think we do a good job explaining what dyslexia is. And again, people who don't have it have their preconceived notions and, I don't blame them, but maybe they should learn more about it. Especially if you're a supervisor, you should know more about a disability so you don't have a preconceived notion of it. ADHD, it's not that I can go out and run a marathon and come back and then go back out again and run a marathon. ADHD, while I'm hyper, we sometimes think too quick, blurt too quick, do things too fast. If you're a supervisor or a friend, you got to understand that the behavior of that individual might be tied to their ADHD. 

And even my supervisor, who's a really good supervisor, I really enjoy my boss, even he thinks sometimes and has said, hey, Doug, you kind of went a little too quick. Let's tone it down a little bit. And he's in academia. He understands learning disabilities more than most out in industry, there's no patience for it. There's no patience for dyslexia, there's no patience for ADHD. And I think because a lot of times we're actually the hardest working and this might annoy people, but I think we tend to be some of the brighter people in the room. If you grab that person with dyslexia and ADHD and help them get going, they're going to be probably the most productive person and the most creative because dyslexia and ADHD, we're generally the most creative person in the group, and we look at a problem where everyone walks forward. We're going to go around it, under it, above it, and find a different way of doing it that's more efficient and generally more effective.

Lauren Clouser:

Definitely. And like you said earlier, you're used to working harder than your peers to produce the same amount of work. So that definitely will play in. So again, a real shame that, like you said, in the industry there's not as much of a tolerance. Hopefully things are going to be moving in the right direction, but it's tough. 

Dr. Douglas Sims:

I think in industry, there's a lot of companies that have mission statements that they're all inclusive. They are accepting. What I've seen out in industry is a lot of those are words. They don't necessarily follow those words. And I actually watched an individual on the autism spectrum lose a job because they weren’t the norm within the group. But the motto of the company said, we're all inclusive. And I'm like, well, you just violated your own slogan.

Lauren Clouser:

And again, like you said, I think a lot of it is people not understanding what dyslexia is, what ADHD is, what some of these learning disabilities are. So again, it can make it difficult for them to be inclusive if they don't know.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

I agree. Agree 100 and I wish people would at least go use Google, use Chat GPT. It'll tell you what dyslexia is and what the behaviors are.

Lauren Clouser:

Right. Well, and I wanted to talk to you about your book Wired Differently, the Dyslexic Scientist. So could you tell us what led you to write this book?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

You know, two things happened about two or three years ago. I was at a graduation party of one of our friends' kids because all of our kids graduate from high school at the same time. And one of the people there was a teacher, and she was about to retire. And I remember asking, what do you do? And she says, well, I teach the dummies. And I was actually really offended, very offended. And I said, what do you mean by that? And she goes, you know, the kids with IEPs. And I said, you know, I had an IEP in high school and junior high in elementary. And she said, no, no, there's no way you have a PhD.

I said, well, I did, and I do. But, you know, to me, that was offensive. And I told her that was very offensive. You know, these students like myself are very successful. And, you know, when you have that opinion, it affects your teaching and interaction ability. And she apologized. And I remember thinking that was just, wow, that was really a foolish thing to say. I don't know if it's just the day of the week or whatever it was, but I do know after 30 years of teaching, sometimes teachers get tired.

But, you know, again, if that's the population you serve, that's not a proper statement to make. And I think that's the minority group. Very few teachers feel that way. But then again, right around the same time, I was selected for the Outstanding Alumni of the Year for the College of Science at UNLV. And it was out of the blue. It was very surprising. And so when I got that award, I went up on the stage because this must have been, because that was May and this was October of the same year. I go up to give my speech to the group, the big award ceremony.

And I was thinking right as I walked to the podium that, wow, these people see me as a huge success, I guess. And I was very grateful. I was humbled. But they had no idea of the journey I took to be here. It wasn't an easy journey. It was a painful journey. And after that, I sat down and I told my wife, I'm going to write about my experiences. And she said, great, that's very therapeutic to do it.

So that's how the book came about. And so I basically wrote the book Wired Differently, the Dyslexic Scientist to chronicle my life, to show others that no matter where you come from, your disability, you can be successful with a lot of pain, a lot of joy, wins and losses. But you can. And that's where the book came from, is from my experiences. And I hope it does help people.

Lauren Clouser:

Definitely. Yeah. That's such an important message. Well, Dr. Sims, before I let you go, how can people connect with you?

Dr. Douglas Sims:

In my book, there's my email, but my email is Douglas Sims, csn.edu. they can, you know, email me. I'll be happy to communicate with them. And I think, you know, if someone reads that book, because you can get audio because we're dyslexic, it's easier to listen to audio through Amazon. So at least I was able to do that. You know, they can see that my journey was very painful. You know, I talk about a lot of things in that book. I talk about the special education system I was in, which is different today.

It's a lot more inclusive and more supportive. It talks about my life as I went through school and many parts of my life that were painful for many reasons, not just special ed, but losing relationships and what to expect and how I went on to build a business. And I built several businesses over the years and that business grew and I divested, sold pieces off and then sold the overall organization. But, you know, if anyone wants to do what I did, it's not an easy journey. And, you know, do it 100, otherwise you'll fail. And the big thing is to get a supportive group around you, because if you don't have the right support group around you, you're not going to be successful. And not just my wife or my mother, you know, 40 years ago, you have to have the right people around you that support you.

And don't be shy of your disabilities because again, you're not disabled. You're very capable of being successful, but you know, don't necessarily hide them. I still mask my disabilities from people, and it's just a trait you learn, but you know, be honest with it and learn to use your superpower. Mine was ADHD against dyslexia. Again, I don't necessarily recommend 20 hour work days. I don't do that anymore. But if you can do it, you can be very successful with the right support. So I think that's important.

And when it comes again, I'm going to repeat what I think people need to know about dyslexia and ADHD. Again, you're not disabled, you're very capable. But I wish more people understood what they were. And I hate the fact we call it a disability, but I understand that's part of the DSM requirement. Go out and find support groups. If you're going to college from high school and you have an IEP, get to the school three to six months before you start and go see the disability resource center staff because again, that hard disconnect is there and it's not as easy as high school. But get them involved as soon as you can so you can get everything lined up. Because if you come in with an IEP day one of school, it's going to take a minimum three months to get it down and into the system so that you can get your support structure.

And it's really good once you're in the system of drc, in the higher ed system, definitely.

Lauren Clouser:

Those are all such great notes to end on. Dr. Sims, thank you so much for being on today and for sharing your story and your expertise with us.

Dr. Douglas Sims:

Great. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Lauren Clouser:

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