Wearing glasses makes you smart literally

I read about a kid named Yash Gupta, who started an organization that helps find glasses for kids and teens that need them, after he learnt that not having glasses can cause a 20% loss in learning. He used his own personal problem as a source of inspiration.

I started using glasses about 9 years ago. Both my parents used glasses, but I never really thought that I would need one. They just never appealed to me. It was for smart people.

After all, one of the smart kid at my secondary school then wore glasses, so it further buttressed the point. Fast-forward to the university, and I was still looking at the world with my blurred vision, completely unaware of how bad it was, at least I could see in color.

My first year at the university in Nigeria were indeed “unique”. The schools lecture halls were packed with nothing less than a thousand students, little to no chairs, but lots of standing space and big open windows.

The front of the halls were always crowded, with people standing in every available space just to listen to the lecture, and to make matters worse I am not your average sized lady. I belong to the elegant petite class.

The back of the halls were less crowded, but I ran the risk of adding lack of sound and further blindness to an already bad situation. I am nearsighted. Maybe if there was a tree, I could have climbed to be able to see clearly, but there was none unfortunately.

It seemed that no matter the time I got to class, I was just destined to never see the board. At the time, the boards in the lecture halls were mostly black and a chalk was used to write on them. Later on, they were changed to white boards, but it made no difference to me.

I do not know how I scaled through that year, I did not take part in more than half of my lectures, I could not take notes in class especially when notes where written on the board, but somehow I was able to finish that year without learning so much.

I always had to borrow notes from others to fill up the many gaps in mine.

It probably came up in a conversation or so, on the need to get my eyes checked. I cannot remember distinctly the whole scenario surrounding the why and how of that conversation, but I can vividly remember being bundled with my sibling to the eye clinic. After that I got my first glasses and I suddenly became smarter.

If a child is having a hard time at school learning anything, you might just want to check out if they can actually see.

A person can develop myopia (nearsightedness) anytime from the age of 6 upwards. Having bad vision that has gone undiagnosed can be the cause of a child’s problem with reading and counting which can be seen by others as struggling.

Hyperopia (Farsightedness) is usually present at birth and it is mostly genetically inherited.

If a person is

• Squinting to see properly
• having eyestrain
• headaches
• difficulty in seeing objects both far and near, etc.

these are indications of problems with sight.

There are several other forms of problems with vision, such as amblyopia (Lazy eye), strabismus (cross eye), astigmatism, etc.

A person who suffers from myopia or astigmatism may not properly develop literacy skills, because they will have difficulty in differentiating between letters. It can also hinder their development of social skills.

Getting the proper treatment, such as corrective lenses goes a long way to help people who suffer from problems with their vision.

So there you have it, glasses can actually make you smarter.