An Open Letter to Universities Everywhere
Have you ever been in a room and all of a sudden it feels like the walls are closing in on you and the lights are dimming in and out? That’s what anxiety feels like to me. Have you ever had a test handed to you and when you look at the questions being asked, you feel like they are all trick questions the professor has created to see just how smart you are? That’s what test taking is like for me. Have you ever sat with a group of people and felt like you are yelling for help and no one seems phased and everyone tells you you are fine? That’s what math and science are like for me.
What do people behind the desks filing paperwork do for people like me? They tell me to get tested, study harder, read longer, slower, skip the questions I don’t know and go back to them later. Spoiler alert: this never works. If I don’t know the answers now I won’t know them later. This is easier, though. This does not require finding me a place to fit within the system that has been constructed for everyone but those like me.
In my time at my current university so far, I have discovered many angles of my identity, but the two that have stood out the most are these: too disabled and not disabled enough. Let me explain. If I came into a university and said “I have autism,” there is a place for people like me. If I said I have ADHD, Dyslexia, I’m in a wheelchair, I’m blind, I’m deaf, or I have a speech impediment, there are places for me. But me? I don’t fit any of these boxes. My learning disabilities are too complex for a mainstream classroom to have to deal with—the professor can only repeat the information so many times and classmates already heard it once; But my learning disabilities are not intense enough for special education.
In my time as a student at a so-called “diverse” university, I have not only kept up with my assignments and homework but have done extra credit as well as worked on creating my own curriculum so that I felt that, even if I failed every class simply because my mind is too different, I still learned something.
In 1943, artist Abram Belskie and OBGYN Robert Latou Dickenson created the paired statues Normma and Normman to depict what “normal” people look like, based on 15,000 men and women, ranging from ages 20-25. Later, there was a contest held for the best Normma, a woman who resembled the closest thing to Belskie’s statue. Although there was a winner, she looked nothing like the statue.
In 1961, only after her mother begged and pleaded and fought against school systems, was now-disabilities activist Judith Huemann allowed to go to a segregated “special” high school for students with disabilities.
You may think I learned this information from a sociology class or philosophy or a class on disability sciences. You are wrong. I learned this from books I bought from a bargain bookstore and read to educate myself on what exactly I’m fighting against.
So why have I not failed yet? Why have I not given up? Why have I not dropped out yet? I ask myself this every time I am faced with an educational roadblock. Someone wise once told me “you better be really comfortable advocating for yourself to others because, honey, you’re gonna be doing it the rest of your life.”
There is no normal. There is only scientifically typical. This system is not built for minds like mine and it might not be for a very long time. All the more reason that I am inspired to open a homeschool program for diverse learners so they never have to face these issues.
To close this, I say one thing: I am no more or no less deserving of help than anyone else in this university. No one deserves anything. The truth is you only gain things by working for them. I’m past working towards obtaining help to guide my education for whatever time left I have at my university. I’m fighting for it now and I hope you hear, see, and recognize my fight.
