On Being a Chronically Ill College Student
From 2022
Every semester, I am reminded not only of how hard it is to be a student in our world, especially during pandemic times, but how hard it is to be one with chronic illnesses or disabilities. Even with our right to accommodations and the fact that we sometimes have understanding professors.
The truth is, I generally felt more protected by my 504 plan in middle and high school than I do by Disability Services in colleges. Most colleges, from what I’ve heard, leave certain accommodations - such as needing extra time on assignments or number of absences allowed - up to the professors. This gives our professor, who may or may not know anything about disability or accommodations, so much power over whether or not we have access to them. Professors are just as likely to hold ableist beliefs as anyone else. They may think we’re lazy or just have no interest in the assignment. They may think we’re lying about our health condition or “using it as an excuse" to not do something that doesn’t interest us.
The fact that I don’t know if a professor is going to be cool with giving me extra time on an assignment gave me anxiety every time I sent that email. I started learning how to advocate for my disability needs as a teenager, but that doesn’t stop me from getting anxious that I will be denied those accommodations. Because, unfortunately, I have had to deal with professors who didn’t understand. And I’m always afraid I’ll have to again. In an ableist society, where there is little disability & accessibility education built into any curriculum, anyone you meet is possibly another barrier to the accessibility you’re entitled to. And professors are no exception.
Sometimes I need extra time on assignments. It’s not because I’m lazy or don’t care about the class. Because I have multiple disabilities, the reason depends on my symptoms at the time. Sometimes I’m dealing with chronic pain or fatigue and I just need to rest. Sometimes my ADHD medications aren’t working and I’m having trouble focusing or organizing my assignments and it’s turning me into an anxious mess. Whatever symptom is preventing me from getting things done by the deadline, it means I deserve extra time.
It’s also hard for some of us to deal with all the paper work required to register with disability services. And it’s hard having to constantly prove we’re “disabled enough” to get accommodations. Not to mention, some people don’t have access to healthcare or have a diagnosis - but they are still disabled, and their symptoms make them deserving of accommodations. There’s also the fact that the nature of disability services often involves a lot of privacy violations that able-bodied people never have to deal with. It’s very unlikely that very many able-bodied college students would register with “disability services" in the first place, considering the stigma that disability has. The process of “proving" that you’re disabled enough for accommodations at school doesn’t need to be as thorough as some people believe.
Even though I had been diagnosed with other conditions, there was one semester I was dealing with symptoms that I didn’t have a diagnosis for. This was frustrating because I felt like even though my symptoms (migraines that impacted my vision) were serious and disabling at the time, I felt like professors didn’t take it as seriously because I didn’t have a name for it. I sympathize with anyone who has to deal with the awkward phase of having no diagnosis for debilitating symptoms while in college.
It’s good to teach students how to advocate for themselves. But they shouldn’t have to rely on that alone. I believe most schools do not do enough for their disabled students. There should be more trainings, more hiring of disability advocates who will help them, more disabled student unions, more support groups and other programs and services for disabled students, and more. And way more compassion. Dealing with a disability is hard enough, and being a student is hard enough - combining the two is a challenge, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as it is.