uni accessibility rant [indigenous version]
whenever profs say they wanna see me succeed or they care abt disabled students i rly wanna ask "do you want me to be cured so i can be the best student ever or do you wanna make exceptions every now and then so i can actually perform the knowledge we both know i have???"
like a few things that piss me off
profs (both white allies & natives) teaching about the importance of oral knowledge transmission / how colonial the system is YET saying "i'm sorry i can't do visual or oral-based assessment methods for you" EVEN THO THE RUBRIC IS THE SAME
profs teaching about generational trauma and the health effects of colonialism (mainly substance use disorder & FASD in my case) just to not be accessible or make exceptions because it's inconvenient for them personally,, despite the fact they get paid over 100k a year to teach this shit
"if you were struggling you should've reached out sooner" i have a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects communication bro IM TRYING MY BEST
my worst prof not taking accountability for the way her transphobia has made me feel and how it contributed to my mental health which affected my attendance
"if i do this for you, i have to do this for everyone else too" UNLESS EVERYONE HERE IS REGISTERED WITH THE ACCESSIBILITY PEOPLE THEN NO YOU FUCKING DONT ACTUALLY
it sucks so much cause even tho i'm good friends with the other disabled (similar stuff like adhd & autism) students i can't relate to them because of stuff like :
they have very low support needs compared to me (they can balance part time work & full time school, lack physical health problems, etc)
most don't even recognize themselves as disabled tbh
none of them have idiopathic hypersomnia and are genuinely shocked i'm capable of going to school when i say "researchers consider my condition to be the equivalent of an average person staying awake for 3 days straight, like that's my baseline level of feeling awake and i require another person to give me medication so i can stay awake"
most of their struggles in school seem to be based around comprehending the knowledge from class & organization, not performance-based or executive dysfunction-based (which our university has no idea how to support)
none of them have pathological demand avoidance
most get financial support from their band which makes life wayyy easier
some of them outright pay other people to do their assignments and/or use ai which i'm not rly comfortable doing
all of them can use stress/fear/anxiety/etc as a motivator to get shit done but that doesn't work on me anymore and just leads me to feel paralyzed (like if there's flight/fight/freeze/fawn, they're doing fight while i'm doing freeze
just wanna make it clear i'm not hating on my classmates !! i'm happy they can thrive in a system that wasn't designed for disabled ppl. as someone who isn't thriving i feel very dumb and misunderstood all the time (even amongst disabled peers) which is very frustrating/lonely !!
edit: idk how to explain this shit to people because whenever i talk about these problems, other people want to try to fix the problems (natural response imo), but i've already spents years on stuff like adhd medication, antidepressants, life coaching, peer-tutoring, peer-coaching, various forms of therapy, self-education, reading neurodivergent specific self-help books, using neurodivergent specific journalling prompts, etc.
at this point i feel very comfortable saying my issue is with the school system not allowing me to use the methods of assessment that are best for me, not my struggle to communicate or comprehend the world around me. when i attended an online school that was literally called "flex ed" because it was designed to be flexible to each individual student (in terms of asking for different methods & you could choose how long each course was), i was so happy and successful which is how i got the good grades to go on to study at a top university. i don't need other people to fix me, i need people to take me seriously when i talk about what's best for me
