My First Blog

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by Quinn Bradlee
Thursday, October 30, 2008

My name is Quinn C. Bradlee and I have been diagnosed with dyslexia , ADD/ADHD, and VCFS. VCFS stands for Velo Cardio Facial Syndrome. It can be the cause for dyslexia, as it is in my case, and other disabilities. It is the second most common syndrome in America after Down's Syndrome.VCFS is mostly hereditary. There are different levels of severity, but I was lucky and have just a very mild case of it. There can sometimes be abnormal features of the face such as larger eyebrows, a more prominent looking chin and it can make the nostrils of the nose smaller. I have all of those, but until I point them out to people, they don't notice them.

All of that doesn't stop me from doing what I like; surfing, body boarding, snowboarding, golf, genealogical research, and even though I have only done it once, I love to play squash and I came in third place at my high school tournament, which is where I first played competively. I also love to Kayak and stand up paddle board and I am very family oriented and very proud of my families heritage; they come from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Poland, Germany, France and if you go back really far, they come from Norway, which I have found out on my Scottish side of the family, they were what they called Scotto-Norse, the MacDougalls.

I went to the Lab School of Washington, DC for 12 years and then left at the end of my fresman year and went to The Gow School in South Wales, Buffalo, New York and repeated the ninth grade. I graduated class of '02 and then went to Landmark College for two years which is located in Putney, Vermont. From there I cam back to DC and went to American University for a year to major in film. However you have to take a class in journalism and photography first; unfortunately (despite who my parents are) the journalism class didn't really work out too well for me and I new that I wanted to proceed in film anyways. After AU I went to the New York Film Accedamy and did the one year program. When I was there I studied directing and editing film. I came back home after being in New York for a year and then went to work for Muheim Motion Pictures, which is small production company in Maryland. There I helped make a couple of video-fundraisers and made an eight minute documentary myself called Life With VCFS, which I will also be putting on my website.

In the middle of that time I did a fiew NOLS (National Out Door Learder Ship School) courses; they are the brother of Outward Bound. The first one I did was kayaking in Alaska for a month, where after about a week and a half, there were wales that came right up to our kayaks. We also at one time went over eithfoot swells. We paddled a total of 212 miles. The second NOLS course was in the southern tip of Baja, Mexico where we went sailing for three weeks. However I had to leave after about two weeks because I burnt my foot cooking pasta for my team; while I was cooking the bowl of boiling hot water came down right on my foot.  While I was in boarding school I took a trip with a group called Action Quest, where I went sailing with a groupe of eight kids all together in a fourty two foot schooner around the French Polynesian Islands for three weeks.