In perhaps a similar vein to some of the earlier stories. My younger (step)son suffered from brain damage at birth. He went to a special ed school, but was generally a bright, active, and friendly kid, very outgoing, and, in fact is how I met his mother. When he was in secondary school he could barely read and write, and the doctors told his mother that he would be able to earn a living as a gardner (he has never had any interest in gardening!).
But his first paying job was assembling PCs for a computer shop. After a short period at that, he went back to school, but dropped out again when it became apparent that the VCE would be a disaster. He got into an IT diploma course at RMIT as a handicapped student. Successfully completing this (by now we had found he could type better than write), and then used this as entry to a degree in Library and Information Management at the same institution.
He successfully completed this, (not, admittedly in the minimum time), and his graduation ceremony was week after his mother's death. He was the first ever, and probably still the only, university graduate to come from his special ed school.
He has now been in the same (but moved up a couple of levels) library job for almost twenty years, has been married for 21 years, and is a devoted father of four girls. And turns fifty next year. And reads and types fluently, although his writing is still pretty bad, and his spelling is not too hot either.
I think that has to be rated a success story.
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
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