top of page

Reflection: First Week Of School Positives And Negatives

Writer's picture: Annie KrollAnnie Kroll

CSU Channel Islands building

I finished my first week of school for my masters degree a few weeks ago, and have learned a lot about what the semester will look like. This week, I want to share some of the positives and things I am nervous about that I have experienced in terms of accessibility. For me, accessibility doesn't only look like physical accessibility, but also social awareness accessibility in cases where having autism would cause me to be confused on what is happening.


 

I want to start off with 4 of the positives for the semester:


1: The phrase, "Life happen in graduate school," has been commonly said throughout my introduction to the semester. I feel lucky that there is room to miss for things like illness because that is not something I can control, even if there is something important coming up. It is also nice that I didn't have to work with the school to get special rules for this, every student is given that treatment regardless of a documented disability. Some syllabi in the past have been very strict, where it felt like I had to choose between school and my health. So far, I have not been put in that situation.


2: My classroom is on the first floor, and it is accessible. My classroom accommodation that I had shared about in a previous blog went through, so now I do not need an elevator to access my classes. I also was able to find and so far consistently park in the most accessible parking on campus for the building my classes are in.


3: There are other students in my class who are disability advocates. I feel excited to not be alone in my goal and general accessibility struggles at large, and happy to get to learn about experiences I do not share. In my opinion, the best way to learn about a disability I do not have is through someone with that disability who is willing to share.


4: Because my major focuses on disability accessibility, all of my class material is accessible in multiple ways. For my second unit, I had a video that had a transcript, so I did not need to send an email so that I could have an easier time following along to written words instead of audio information. I feel relieved that accessibility has been written into the curriculum.


 

Next, I want to list 4 things I am nervous about:


1: I am one of only a few disabled students in my very small advanced disabilities studies class. I worry about how to simultaneously share about my experiences as relevant, without creating a dynamic in the class where those without a disability worry about participating.


2: I am not able to pace myself. Normally, I work ahead to help prevent falling behind if I have a medical flare up or a lot of medical appointments. This time, modules are only released each week, so I am unable to get ahead. This means I can only be on time, or behind.


3: My classes are a lot smaller than in undergraduate school. I am not the best at making friends through professional settings because I cannot mask my autism as well as produce good work, so I choose to focus on my school work first. I want to make friends, but it is hard to do in smaller groups.


4: I worry I will share something I regret. I struggle with oversharing. In the moment, I think I am relating, but later on I realize that I could have kept it to myself. I worry that I will over share something relating to my experience being a disabled person that either takes up too much class time, makes people uncomfortable, or is stealing the conversation. My classes are discussion based and one class only has 6 people, so there is a lot of room to accidently steal the conversation.


I hope to update this list after the semester ends to see how everything went as a way to see how I feel after I have completed a semester of graduate school, and start to have a better understanding of what I am going to learn.


 

Thank you for reading about the positives and negatives for my first week of school. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to message me in the questions tab, or reach out at @Anniekrollblog on Instagram or Facebook. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you next week!

0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page