As a young kid, I was asked by a psychologist, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Without skipping a beat, I replied, “I have this reoccurring dream of one day being a psychologist and giving lots of talks.”

Instead of putting me on the lecture circuit, the psychologist told my parents [3] I had delusions of grandeur, and I was shipped off to special education [4].

By age 3, I had had 21 ear infections, which developed into an auditory learning disability [5] that made it very difficult for me to process speech in real time. I always felt a step or two behind the rest of the kids in the classroom. As a result, I retreated into my own inner world.

I would come home and write stories about time travel, imagine soap opera plotlines, and visualize scenarios about a future in which I was a successful psychologist. These early daydreams offered me a much-needed escape from the realities at school, where I was bullied by students and accorded low expectations from teachers. But no one had access to my most private mind, full of plans for my future and dreams [6] of a different world. To students […]