We recently received a request for an episode from a listener. We’ve never gotten one of those before, so to say we were excited about it would be putting it very mildly. As it turns out, the request was from a young autistic woman named Nicole who is starting college soon, and wanted to hear our thoughts on how disability affects the college experience. As always, we hope you enjoy this episode! A transcript for this episode can be found here.
Disability and College
This was a very strange episode for us to make. We both had extremely different college experiences. Emily dormed at school, I did not. Emily had friends, I did not. Emily utilized her school’s ODS, I did not. Basically, our time at college couldn’t have been any more different if we planned them out.
Because of this, we have totally different stories to tell. We meet in the middle as usual though! Accessibility is a huge problem at many colleges. While Emily and I were generally fortunate in that we went to colleges that had the resources to provide a (mostly) accessible time at college, we also talk about times where we’ve had to work with our professors and instructors to get things done.
Self-reliance is important for anyone to learn starting college. But having a disability adds an entire separate layer on top of it all. On the other hand, having a disability allows you to learn self-reliance very quickly. It’s a skill that you will use for the rest of your life.
We also share our embarrassing first day stories, so if nothing else about this episode catches your attention, you may want to listen just for that. We hope you enjoy this episode, but especially Nicole. We hope this episode helps you (and anyone else who listens!) a little. And if you’re someone starting college soon, don’t worry! You’ll be fine.