Attending college is an experience and Everyone’s experience is different. For me, it was good most of the time, but there were some days, I wanted to throw in the towel.
As a person with a disability my major issue with college came from the inability to use my hands to write. I’m sure it would be different now due to all the advanced technology, but when I attended back in the 90’s, technology was just taking flight.
To be sitting in a classroom, like first thing in the morning, waiting for a scriber to show up is a helpless feeling. Often, fellow students would offer to take notes for me, which I gratefully accepted and appreciated. Still seeking to be as independent as possible, I would use a pocket tape-recorder to try and catch whatever I could from the professors’ lecture, but to be honest, you miss a lot with this method.
Another issue I encountered during my college experience was that I would have a good professor and then a not so good professor. The good ones would go above and beyond to make sure you either had the accommodations you needed for the class or led you in the direction of getting them through the help of the Disabilities Services Department, while others just didn’t care. It’s hard when you must deal with attitudinal barriers because of your disability; but as I was taught at a young age, that’s just life.
I graduated in 1995 receiving my degree in Disability Intervention Services. I’m so happy I hung in because my college experience made me stronger.
My friend Matt, who also attended college, had an experience he’d like to share. Take it away Matt.
Throughout my college experience my Epilepsy remained uncontrolled, and as a result I was on an astronomical amount of medicine to control my seizures. This made the learning process slightly more challenging for me.
As a learner, I am more hands on. While I took most of my college classes in person, I did end up having to take a few classes by Distance Learning, or over the World Wide Web, as there wasn’t another section for the particular class I needed to graduate. This was more difficult for me as I could not ask questions in the way I was able to in a classroom.
In college, I worked on campus as a student assistant in Teleport 2 and in the CIL, which stands for (Center for Interactive Learning). These were computer labs where all students could go to work on coursework. If students had any technology related questions, I assisted them. One of the things I enjoyed about this opportunity to work on campus was that my boss was also my Customer Service Concepts professor. She was able to help me grow professionally and succeed academically. In addition, I also had other amazing professors which I always tried to take classes with because most of my professors understood my learning style and why I needed certain accommodations in order to succeed.
Many of them even went the extra mile. However, at the same time, there were professors that just did not understand, and then others that were downright difficult about understanding my disability and then made no effort to help me succeed.
Moving forward I believe college professors and faculty will learn from what their predecessors did effectively and in the same way learn from their mistakes to help make them better educators. This will lead to an even more inclusive college experience.
As you can see; Matt and I made it through college. Our roads to accomplish higher education were different but we managed. It’s our hope to encourage others that if you’re thinking about attending college, you can do it too.