Greider is dyslexic and states that her "compensatory skills also played a role in my success as a scientist because one has to intuit many different things that are going on at the same time and apply those to a particular problem" Greider initially suspected her dyslexia after seeing patterns of common mistakes such as backwards words when she received back graded work in the first grade. Greider started to memorize words and their spellings rather than attempting to sound out the spelling of words. Greider has worked significantly to overcome her dyslexia to become successful in her professional life, and credits her dyslexia as helping her appreciate differences and making unusual decisions such as the one to work with Tetrahymena, an unusual organism.