Cory Steele

What is synesthesia?

(From) what I’ve read, it’s kind of just a different wiring in the brain when people see things, and it’s actually kind of beneficial. It can really help with organization and stuff, like with people who like to color-code things.

How did you discover you had synesthesia?

It was actually 3 years ago at a summer camp I go to; they were doing a bonding thing between all the girls in the dorm hall that we were staying in, and one girl said that she had this thing called synesthesia, and I was like “Oh, what’s that?” She told me all about it, and then I looked it up. I was like, “Wait, I do the same thing; that’s so cool.”

Given the multiple types of synesthesia, how do you experience the condition?

I see numbers and letters as all having their colors, (as well as) subjects—which I think a lot of people do and they don’t realize. A lot of subjects have different colors, like in school. People (have colors), but their names. If you tell me your name, I picture your name in a certain color.

Do you experience this kind of benefit?

Kind of. I have certain highlighters for different things in my notes, like vocab words and stuff. I always use a pink and a green for this, and a blue for this, so, yeah, I kind of see it in the way that I take notes in class and things like that.

Do you know anyone else with synesthesia?

No one that I know of besides the person that I first learned it from; her name is Hannah. I met her at the camp—she actually sees sound in color, so that’s where I first learned about it.