Life as a College Student

I recently completed my freshman year at Howard Community College, which I began the fall of 2018. Now it’s time for me to reflect my personal experiences in higher education by explaining what life is like as a college student with physical challenges and how I could overcome them. This year has been an introduction to the next chapter of my life as a young adult, which basically started me on the journey to achieve my goals for the future. I’m a Social Sciences major and I’ve managed to explore a wide variety of disciplines associated with the fields of study that is of my interest including sociology, psychology, social work, and public health.

I learned over this past year that higher education is generally is a valuable experience for students with disabilities who wish to have a successful life regardless of their academic achievement. However, it can also be a challenging aspect of their lives as well as the ability to learn and pursue career goals.  A couple of years before graduating from high school,  my parents and special educators worked hard to prepare for the transition by ensuring I had the adequate access to resources that helped me become successful and independent.   Once I enrolled into HCC, I found it difficult at first because most of the resources I depended upon in high school were no longer available to me. As I waited to start classes, I had to spend many months searching for a one-to-one aide to go with me for physical assistance and help with communication.  After a lot of searching, my uncle decided that he would get certified for our companionship since he enjoys helping me do lots of things and we have a lot in common. For example he was able to transport me to and from campus via car instead of having to call for public transit. He stayed in class with me for the whole time just for safety and to ensure everything went okay. I took the total of two classes during each semester, one online and one on campus. This means the load was extremely low because off of my classes involved an intense amount of reading and writing (it takes me longer to get all the work done due to my vision loss.)  We also found out that many of the things used in college for educating, such as their online math program, are not accessible for people who are visually impaired.  This has put my math class on hold until they can figure out a way to make the material visually accessible for me.  I also discovered that community college relies mostly on group work, rather than lecture and independent study.  This made my classes even more challenging, since many of the students were not able or willing to speak in a way I could hear them during group discussions. I had to change one of my classes to an online format for this reason, so that I could do discussions online where I could read what people had to say.

Another problem I found was the lack of social opportunities at the community college level.  I rarely made any connections on campus and I don’t have close friends there either, but I sometimes attend plays and musicals that take place at night. Even though college life is generally different from high school, I understand that many students view getting involved on campus as dis-interesting and forgettable, and focus more on homework and studying than making friendship The best thing about HCC is that the class sizes are generally small which allows me to get to know the professors and ask them questions at any time before or after class. The campus is fairly handicap-accessible which makes mobility easier for me to move around to get anywhere safely using a wheelchair.  When I’m in a classroom full of twenty students around me, it usually gives me more individual attention and accessibility on information processing. The professors tend to be very accommodating and really great at helping me succeed. At the beginning of each semester it was hard because they didn’t know much how to modify any materials that were already inaccessible, so I worked with a disability service coordinator to figure out what accommodations are reasonable to reach a solution. The first thing she did was by communicating with my professors to introduce me and explain my needs in simple terms so they could better understand the best way to create accessible content.  I was then assigned a transcriber who is trained and uses a computer to take notes for me as I followed along with the class. I also received copies of the materials with enlarged print including transcripts of the videos and textbooks to help me organize the content and study for tests. I have had the struggles with comprehension at times when the content was written abstractly, so I tried reading the same thing multiple times to understand the text. It’s definitely one of the most powerful techniques for every college student to acquire in order to improve their thinking. I learned a lot from the coursework and both sociology and psychology are interesting fields of study. It made me wonder if I could consider earning either a bachelor’s or masters degree or both, that would lead to a career position in helping people with disabilities. I used an iPad as the main technological device in the classroom to facilitate communication during lectures and group discussions. 

Everything I have done so far has resulted in a positive learning experience which motivates me for achieving these goals. I finished my first year at HCC with a 4.0 GPA, which I am very proud of.  It has been a busy year ahead for me and I’m hoping to have a relaxing summer before continuing my education.