A day in the life of... Gavin

7.00 Gavin gets up early as he knows he needs a bit of time to get organised in the mornings. He eats breakfast because he’s learned that his brain needs fuel to see him through the morning! He always puts the stuff he needs on the table in the hall, ready to go the next morning. Key, phone, wallet, lunch – quick run through his checklist, yep, it’s all there to grab on the way out the house.

8.45 Gavin gets the bus to work. He’s more confident with bus timetables now that he can access them online. Sometimes he gets a bit stuck, but feels confident to ask other people at the bus stop for help choosing the right bus.

9.00 On time for work, Gavin catches up with his manager and gets on with tasks for the day. He loves helping customers find what they need. Stock-take can be a bit tricky, but he uses a handy app to read out the paperwork to him. Gavin has told his manager and colleagues about being dyslexic and what help he needs. Some of them didn’t understand at first, but when they saw how he approached work using his strengths, they got a better idea of what it was like and they value him for his great assets. Gavin is now part of his work’s social team, and he regularly organises dyslexia awareness activities and fundraising.

13.00 Finished work for the day, Gavin heads over to the college to work on his latest portfolio piece. He’s entering a local competition to design a poster for the town fun day. Gavin has loads of great ideas and is excited about the work he’s doing. He finds he learns lots more through doing this as he looks up YouTube videos on techniques and finds out about famous poster designers and their careers, which inspires him even more.

15.00 Gavin heads home after a busy day. His head is bursting with ideas for his poster design but he feels tired out. He scribbles some thoughts down in a notebook so he doesn’t forget them later.

17.00 Mum and Dad are home and asking about his day. He tells them about his project. Gavin’s dad also has dyslexia but is not as confident about it as Gavin. Gavin feels that his parents have helped him loads, though. Sometimes his mum rolls her eyes when Gavin and dad share a dyslexic moment joke.

20.00 At the end of the day Gavin spends some time looking through Google images, as he finds that relaxes his mind. His mum asks him to get some things from the shop the next day. Gavin writes the reminder in his phone straight away so he gets the prompt at the end of his shift, then puts all the things he needs for tomorrow on the hall table.

21.00 A quick video call catch up with his friends on Skype then it’s time for bed. Gavin needs quite a lot of sleep before an early start again tomorrow.