Dana Jarvis didn\u2019t know she was dyslexic until her Open University tutor recognised some symptoms \u2013 now she\u2019s just graduated with a degree in Classical Studies and she\u2019s about to become a published author.<\/p>\n
The road to success began when the 27 year old from Holt in Norfolk, who is also autistic, decided to start on her OU journey in 2022 while working as a carer in her community.<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019d always been interested in history but kept hearing the fears of friends and acquaintances living with dyslexia or autism that a university education was not possible for those with neurodiversity.<\/p>\n
But with a bit of help from The Open University, Dana decided to prove them wrong:<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it seemed a bit strange to not do that. So, I just went for it.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In 2025, not only did she complete her degree, but she got married, too, and it was husband, Billy, and mum Chris Wright, who proudly watched on as she walked across the stage to officially receive her BA(Hons) at a ceremony in London\u2019s Barbican.<\/p>\n
This year marks a second great achievement \u2013 the publication by Pegasus of her romance fantasy novel, set in a fantasy world, under the pen name of Dana Kelley.<\/p>\n
It was when she was in her second year that Dana caught the writing bug when she encountered a creative writing unit on her course:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to write a very short story and I really enjoyed it, so I decided that I\u2019d continue and I ended up writing this book.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s fair to say she\u2019s never looked back since the beginning of her OU degree. Her dyslexia diagnosis made a world of difference to Dana.<\/p>\n
Today, she uses a transparent little purple overlay to help her see the words.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt stops the words actually \u2018vibrating\u2019 is how I describe it. Yeah, I don’t know why I didn’t really think about dyslexia sooner.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
At school, she had always liked reading books but was slow at it. With the help of the overlay, reading has now dramatically speeded up.<\/p>\n
In terms of her coursework, she said OU tutors were very accommodating:<\/p>\n
\u201cOften if I was struggling, I could just e-mail my tutor and say so and they would give me like a good week extra on top to get the work done.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
She says she also had a lot of support in her job as a kennel hand, too, which she\u2019s been working in since leaving domiciliary care work, looking after retired greyhounds \u2013 she has one herself called Roman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI swapped human beings for dogs! I couldn’t imagine a better job really, because my boss is really, good. I’ve explained how I am to her, and she tries her absolute best to accommodate me.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Picture: <\/em>Dana Jarvis at an Open University degree ceremony at London\u2019s Barbican<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dana Jarvis didn\u2019t know she was dyslexic until her Open University tutor recognised some symptoms \u2013 now she\u2019s just graduated with a degree in Classical Studies and she\u2019s about to become a published author. The road to success began when the 27 year old from Holt in Norfolk, who is also autistic, decided to start […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":28056,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,18],"tags":[741,858,860,869,2673,2671,2672,1525,1542,1640],"class_list":["post-28055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-social-sciences","category-classics","category-student-stories","tag-dyslexia","tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences","tag-faculty-of-fass","tag-fass","tag-holt","tag-neurodivergence","tag-neurodiverse","tag-news-home","tag-norfolk","tag-ou-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28057,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28055\/revisions\/28057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}