“No-one talks about it being difficult for students with disabilities/chronic illness. No one discusses how these things are dealt with – or not – by the academy at large. No one explains that your inability to “keep up” due to your illness will be perceived as weakness, or that this will be communicated to you implicitly, insidiously, so that you come to believe it and question your place in academia.”

“Your body starts to fail. At first it is vague symptoms that can all be attributed to doing a PhD. Start to get double vision? Clearly you must have been doing data entry for too long. Fatigue? Not sleeping well? Weight loss? It’s just stress. Joint pain in the hands and wrists? Must be sore from all that coding.”  

1. Get help. 2. ?? 3. Cured!

“I felt that the default response from the academy was one of distrust. I sensed the implicit suspicion that I, and others like me, were trying to buck the system.”

“For the disabled and chronically ill researcher who needs any form of adjustment to access an event, you need to know what access is available. And nine times out of ten, this information isn’t provided by organizers of academic events in the information they send out about academic events, including what they publish on the internet.”

“When it comes to studying for a PhD, even the most experienced student won’t know how their disability will affect their work strategies since their experience of academic work will (generally) only be in the context of taught courses, i.e. taught undergraduate degrees, and in all likelihood, a taught postgraduate Masters-level course.”

“...you are forced to foreground your disability. This is the thing that requires adjustments, reminders, sharp nudges in the ribs. It can be tiresome, let alone painful, problematic while trying to maintain an expansive conception of yourself filled with possibilities beyond the small matter of being able to get in the door. Literally.”

“Many people with neurological differences live ordinary, fulfilled lives – and are capable of doing well at university. But we need a good support service at university, so that we can access higher education on a level playing field with other students who don’t face these difficulties.”