The Burden of Being a Disabled Student

If you asked me whether disabled people are a burden, I would tell you without hesitation that no, they are not. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to say positive things about the community you belong to than it is to say those positive things about yourself. I can quite happily cheer on another blind student in their pursuit to obtain an education, offering them encouragement and telling them that they are perfectly reasonable for asking for adaptations to be made; but when I have to ask for those same adaptations, I am filled with intense guilt. Guilt isn’t even a strong enough word. I’m scared and a little ashamed, I suppose.

I feel slightly pathetic admitting this, especially on such a public platform. I’m supposed to be an activist. I’m supposed to be shouty and demanding and relentless in my pursuit for disability justice. But the truth is I’m as worried and insecure as anybody else. I guess that means I’m human, who knew!

Studying has always brought up complex feelings around being disabled. Why would anyone choose me as a student, when I’m always going to take more than I give? This feeling increases as I head towards higher levels of education. To get a PhD, a supervisor actually has to want to work with me. But why would they, when there are other candidates who don’t need everything I do. These are questions that are constantly at the back of my mind, but in recent days, they’ve been rudely pushing their way to the front. What can I specifically give to a research project or bring to the table that any other student can’t? I’m curious and engaged, I like to ask questions and seek out information, but that doesn’t set me apart at this level. Why would anyone apply for a PhD who didn’t possess all of those qualities?

My current supervisor didn’t have much of a choice about working with me. I’m getting a master’s degree and I chose a specific project to research in place of a dissertation. As I wrote him another email, this time about the inaccessibility of the ethics form, I felt extremely guilty. University staff are under huge amounts of pressure especially at the moment. They’re expected to magically produce resources for online learning, troubleshoot technical problems whether they know how to or not, handle queries from students over email or Teams, provide feedback on assignments, run seminars, and somehow on top of that conduct their own research. I’m sure I’m also missing out a few things. The casual conversations that usually happen at the end of a lecture in person aren’t happening at the moment as we’re all online, so the volume of electronic communications they’re needing to deal with has only increased. The last thing any of them needs on top of all of that is me. And yet here I am. Sending emails. Asking questions. Needing things.

The scrap of my brain that remains logical throughout this knows it’s not my fault. And in fact it’s everyone who teaches me who most often tells me this. Pretty much every single person who has taught me at Leeds has told me that it’s totally ok for me to ask for things to be adapted and made accessible. They’ve insisted that I ask for it. They’ve been great, and I’m extremely thankful and genuinely relieved every time they tell me this. But it’s not enough to get rid of the guilt and the fear that if I write a PhD proposal I will very nicely be told that I’m just not the candidate they’re looking for. And how do I separate the truth from my clearly very complex feelings. I may not be the right candidate. Perhaps I apply to multiple programmes, the chances are I won’t be accepted into all of them. I can’t assume that’s because of my blindness, it’s an utterly ridiculous and self-defeating assumption that serves absolutely no useful purpose. In fact, even considering it makes me laugh because it’s so ridiculous. I genuinely don’t think any potential supervisor would sit there and reject me on the grounds that I’m blind, and if they did, they would probably be a terrible human being so it would be a lucky escape. But would the nice ones, the reasonable ones, those who do care about their students have signed up to work with me if they really knew how bloody difficult it can be?

These feelings aren’t limited to academia. I worry about asking friends to meet me at locations that I know how to travel to, or to guide me, or to read me a menu. I worry about dating to the point that I avoid it entirely. I worry about how much I must take from people and how little I can give in return. I don’t think disabled people are a burden, but I do think there are things we need from people that others don’t. And whilst if my friends needed that, I wouldn’t even consider rejecting them because of it, I can’t help thinking it would be perfectly reasonable for everyone else to do that to me.

I’m sure if we unpack childhood experiences of mine we’d find the root of a lot of this. But that isn’t something I’m willing to do on this blog. There are limits to what I share about my life, as shocking as that may seem to those who are resigned to my apparent comfort with over-sharing. Whatever the cause is of these feelings, I know I’m not the only disabled person who has them. I’ve read blog posts by others who feel similarly and also had conversations with friends who feel the same way. Some are going to tell me this is internalised ableism. But is that helpful? Is actually telling a disabled person who’s wrestling with these complicated feelings that they’re being ableist and need to stop going to help them find a way through this? No, it isn’t. I can theorise about disability all day, I wouldn’t be a social sciences student otherwise. But right now looking at how I’ve constructed my disabled identity isn’t going to get me to a point where I don’t feel guilty every time I send an email.

I’m not sure that I’m looking for anything honestly. Strategies perhaps. Reassurance. Hand holding? I think we can get really focussed on trying to solve these feelings, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t. Of course living in a constant state of anxiety and self-doubt isn’t healthy and I probably need to work through it. But equally maybe this is something I need to learn how to live with. Maybe I’m always going to look at the columns of give and take and observe that they aren’t quite even. But maybe I can also choose not to care, or to care but in a productive way. Maybe the only way to get through this is by doing it. By writing those research proposals. By asking questions. By engaging with people and having conversations. By trusting.