School failure to ship’s top medic
‘I was the kid who was made to stand on the chair to read in class while the others laughed,’ John Spence says, recalling his school days. ‘The teachers said I didn’t deserve to be there.’
He left at 16 with no qualifications to join the Army, serving in Afghanistan and Iraq as a medic – but he still thought of himself as stupid.
John left the Army in 2000, embarking on a career as an ocean paramedic, taking a course in pre-hospital emergency medicine. Though he excelled at practical and theoretical work, John failed the written test, baffling his instructor.
But Open University experts established John has Meares-Irlen syndrome, when the brain struggles to process visual information. ‘It makes words come out of a page and swap around,’ John, 46, says. Treatment involved wearing tinted spectacles and using transparent green overlay sheets on a page ‘which stops the words jumping’ – and then there was no stopping him.
He took a basic certificate in education, moved on to a diploma and then a degree, graduating with a 2:1 in health sciences eight years later.
While studying, John worked on board a ship, with exams frequently invigilated by the captain. Now he is a senior medical officer, responsible for the health of a crew of 150. ‘I wish my teachers could see me now,’ he says.