Tripping Over My Pride

"College is the time to explore your dreams", "College is the time to cultivate your passions"- Ever heard that before? I have- several times. Usually very early in the morning and usually from overly perky campus tour guides who are on their thirteenth cup of coffee for the day. I'm sure that they wanted to get me pumped about being at their university, and I was, but for completely different reasons. Yeah, I wanted to "cultivate my passions" but more importantly, in college, I wouldn't have to go to physical therapy twice a week and I wouldn't have any overly concerned administration members poking around my life all the time. In college I could do anything I wanted.

Oh how wrong I was. Sure -you don't really have to do anything you don't want to, but you will want to file paperwork with your campus's Disability Services Office. Yeah, you can do everything on your own and you are self-sufficient to the point of stubborness, but you will want someone to shovel you out of your dorm and to tell you where all of the accessable exits are when your dorm decides to have a fire drill at three in the morning. Despite what you may think, the offices of disability services is not filled with a bunch of little old ladies with prayer beads waiting to pity you. They are trained professionals who simply want to make campus a fair place to be.

When I first went to college I registered with Disability Services, but only because my mother made me. I didn't want to have an office full of people who were all into my business, feeling sorry for me or acting like my "campus parent". I wanted full control and utter independence. So, when my parents dropped me off, I stopped keeping in touch with my counselor from the office. In hindsight, this was a mistake, in not talking to my counselor I had made things more difficult for myself. In not cultivating a relationship with her, she was unable to anticipate some my easiest needs, such as winter-time transportation or an accessable bathroom. When I transferred (for other reasons), I made it a point to keep in touch with my counselor and everything has gone smoothly. Not only do I tell her things that could pose a problem to me but those things that will make life difficult for other disabled students.

Its Not Popular...

Ever since I entered middle school, my mother and I have debated what it is to be "popular". She was convinced that I had begun trying to be popular; I was adamant that that was not the case. In hindsight, I believe that I was just trying to be well liked, because life is difficult when you are the only one in your classroom who can be heard before they are seen. I wanted people to like me so that there was one less thing restricting me from the life I wanted to accomplish.
I am writing this blog as one of [what I feel is] the most under-represented groups in America: disabled young adults. Sure there are characters on Grey's Anatomy and Glee, but these characters are played by people who don't know what it's like to have their intelligence questioned on sight or to be addressed in the same voice that people address their infants. I do. This blog is to that we don't have to go through life striving to be "well liked", afraid of making any enemies or obstacles; it is so that we can go through life simply being ourselves.