#dea muses

A lot of people, disabled and non-disabled alike, talk about accommodations for testing and stuff.  But I want to talk about actually learning the material and how much extra work goes into getting accommodations in the first place.

Last fall semester I spent months getting approved for accommodations, and I have an official German government issued disability ID.  If I record my lectures, that’s 90 minutes I’m in class, and then 90 minutes after class, if I just listen straight through, to take notes and transcribe what the professor says.  If I am having vision/print issues, I need to take time to scan the book(s).  If I can’t concentrate, an assignment that will take a NT student an hour will take me sometimes five hours.  I get extensions, but that work doesn’t go away, I just have longer to do it, and my current work gets added to it, so instead of having one paper I end up with double.

I have to plan in time to get lost or distracted when going anywhere.  I get extra times on tests, but that time doesn’t just come from nowhere.  I use a computer, but for some things it would be easier to write by hand, except I can’t, and if I make the exception, I get asked about it -- something that takes time away and is a distraction.    

I “get” to take exams out of the classroom, but that means coordinating with the professor ahead of time (which is absolute hell for my ADHD brain), and the possibility that if I have a question, there is no way to ask it.  I had an Old English translation exam where the professor had a typo that completely changed the meaning of the sentence.  Thankfully, we were allowed to use the dictionary at the back of our readers, so I could flip through the meager vocabulary and figure out what I thought she meant.  After the exam, I was able to go to her and ask about it, and she then told the entire class during their exam. 

I’m currently trying out a research organization method, and half the time is spent going “I am resisting this because it’s not what I’m used to and my brain is rebelling or is it a method that just doesn’t work?” 

I also don’t know when to quit.  NT people get a seminar paper assignment, spend a few weeks researching, and then sit down to right.  Me, I spend four months researching, have no idea where the end even is, and never get to writing in the first place.

Abled students wake up in the morning, do their routines, and head to the 10am class, maybe tired but otherwise sure of their ability to do the work.  They can look at an assignment and reasonably guess how long it will take them.  They may not like to cook or clean, but it’s not an insurmountable task, just an unpleasant one.  Me? I have to plan when to take out the trash and walk myself through the steps.  I have to convince myself to brush my teeth, or do work at all.  And not in a “I want to be lazy” but in a “I want to do this, I should do this, but I just cannot” way.

Hi, my name is Dea, and I am a medieval archaeologist.

Hi, my name is Dea, and I am disabled in multiple ways.

Believe it or not, these two sentences do not preclude each other.

It’s 2013 and I’m at my first field experience.  For some reason, it comes up that I can’t drive.  “You can’t drive?” The lab manager stares at me.  “What do you mean, you can’t drive?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t really know how to.  I know the motions, I have driven, and have a driver’s license, but it’s not actually safe for me to drive in any place that has more traffic than the one-stoplight town I did my driving test in.”

“Well,” he says completely serious, “you have to learn how to drive.  If you really want to be a bioarchaeologist, you must know how to drive.”

During that same field experience, we’re chatting about grad school in bioarchaeology.  A couple of the students are already in or have completed graduate programs, but most of us are still in undergraduate programs.  “It’s really cut-throat,” the lab director says.  “You can’t show weakness.”

“Yeah,” the field director adds, “anyone who falls behind or shows some weakness is going to be pounced on, there’s no room for people who can’t handle the harsh and stressful environment.” 

“Unless you’re always on top of things, you shouldn’t even bother applying.”  The lab director then launches into a story about one of his MA students who had a family emergency one fall semester and wanted a letter of recommendation from him.  “I couldn’t write her a good one,” he confesses, “because I didn’t support her going on to a PhD program.  She nearly failed out during that semester, what if that happened during a PhD program?  There’s no place for people like that in PhD programs.”

“But it wasn’t her fault,” I timidly say.  I may not have family emergencies, but I am well-acquainted with the general feeling of getting lost during a semester.  “It was a family emergency.  And what about disabled people?”  What about me, was my unspoken question.

“Well, that’s not an excuse.” He shrugs, “They just shouldn’t be archaeologists.”

They just shouldn’t be archaeologists.

There were fifteen of us during that field program.  For some of us, it was their first time traveling abroad.  For many of us, this was our first field experience.  A couple of people weren’t planning on making careers in archaeology, but in other subjects where gaining experience in osteology would be helpful.  Some of were planning on applying to grad school that coming fall, some of us had a ways to go.  There were eighteen and nineteen year-olds to people over thirty.  We were atheists and Jewish and Christian students.  Some of us spoke other languages; some of us were monolingual. Most of us were American, though one was Australian.  We had a lot of different backgrounds and abilities, but there were two things that set me apart from the others.

1. I am a first-generation, low-income college student

2. I am disabled

The archaeology or bioarchaeology of disability is a growing field.  Back in 2013, Lorna Tilley had published a bit in the field, E. A. DeGangi was starting her career and stated (and still states) her interest in “the bioarchaeology of impairment”, and even the lab director himself had co-authored one of DeGangi’s papers on bioarchaeology and disability.  There was the origin of the field, Dettwyler’s “Can Paleopathology provide evidence of compassion,” and Irina Metzler had published The Disability in Medieval Europe in 2011.

In 2017, even more work is being done, combining the fields of anthropology, archaeology, history and disability studies.  But every time I read an article or book, there’s a tiny voice in my head that goes “if you don’t want disabled archaeologists, what gives you the right to talk about our experiences?”

There are articles, such as this one, that talk about the relationships between changelings and autistic children.  Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind talks about the construction of blindness in the Middle Ages.  Mental disorders such as ADHD have only existed officially since the 20th century, but people have been described with ADHD traits much earlier.  There is always the fear of anachronism, and people hesitate to label past people (including famous people) with various disabilities.

It’s not surprising, to be honest, for even modern Disability Studies seems to change its model every few years: is there a medical model of disability or a social one? Am I disabled because I have an impairment, because I am missing something “normal” people have? Or am I disabled because of the society I live in?  If I lived on a farm, would I be as impaired as I am as a graduate student?

Modern Disability Studies give us certain terminology, such as “able-bodied” that are troublesome themselves: physically, my body is in the range of normal, yet I am multiply disabled.  “Ableism” is a good, inclusive term in my opinion, because it doesn’t rely on physical or mental ability.  Functioning labels should be generally avoided, and there are certain communities that claim they are not disabilities at all, such as the Deaf Community and the growing trend in the Autistic community

The important criterion of modern Disability Studies is the fact that most Disability Studies scholars self-identify as disabled.  Just as it is increasingly rare to see cis men as Woman Studies scholars or cis, heteroromantic, and heterosexual scholars in Queer Studies, finding an abled Disability Studies scholar is a challenge.  (I should, however, point out that there is a big difference between Special Education and Disability Studies: the former in my experience is full of abled and often ableist scholarship.)   But when it comes to Disability Studies in the past, none of the main authors show any indication of being disabled.    

Of course, no one is required to out themselves.  However, I do find it interesting that so many historical disability scholars show absolutely no indication in their blogs, websites or work that they are disabled, that they chose this topic because it’s important to them as disabled academics, and not because they want to perform drive-by anthropology.

Anthropology and archaeology are full of decade long debates of privileged academics studying disadvantaged communities.  Our discipline was created by White European and American scholars who went into Native populations and studied them...and often completely misjudged or misinterpreted their cultures, which led to the continuing misinterpretation of these cultures that we are only now, in the last couple of decades, trying to fix.

Hey! 

I started this gradblr in October when I first began my MA but quickly fell off the wagon when the combination of uni and life got too much.  I am now back again, hopefully to stay.    I’m trying to motivate myself and organize my life, so I’m hoping that using this gradblr will spur me to get back on track and possibly even get ahead - it worked this afternoon! I did 70 pages of reading and took 4 pages of notes, and my goal is to get this chapter done before bed (still have 26 pages to go).

The pictures are of my very messy desk and still messy but not as bad notes along with my color key.  I’m trying to find a note-taking method that works for me right now: in class I type everything but when I am taking notes from a book I find I prefer paper for general notes and a word document for particular quotations since I have issues with handwriting.  My desk will be cleaned...after the presentation the notes are for, which is on Wednesday. Be glad you don’t see the rest of my apartment.

Anyways, I am turning 31 in just over a month, hail from California but currently live and attend grad school in Germany.  I’m doing an MA in Archaeology with a focus on the medieval and early modern periods.  I’m autistic, visually impaired, chronically ill, and have a bunch of other disabilities including but not limited to ADHD, anxiety, OC(P)D and dyspraxia.  My depression has really been kicking me lately, so I’m trying to get out of that funk.