Summary: The author shares their personal experience during the pandemic, starting with the initial shock and sudden changes in their life. They flew back home just before the first lockdown and decided to prioritize their mental health, resulting in failing the semester. Online classes provided an opportunity for better accommodations for their disabilities, but the return to in-person classes created frustration and a feeling of abandonment by the accessibility center. Despite the challenges, the author graduates, grateful for the support of individual professors.

Takeaways:

🛫 The pandemic brought sudden changes and disruptions to everyone's lives.

🧠 Prioritizing mental health is essential, even if it means making difficult decisions.

💻 Online classes can provide better accommodations for students with disabilities.

🏫 Advocating for your needs as a student is important, even when faced with resistance.

🎓 Individual professors can make a significant difference in supporting students' academic journey.

The Pandemic's Impact on My Life

Struggling Abroad

I was on exchange in England when the rumblings of the pandemic first began. Like everyone else, my life changed unbelievably in the span of one week.

A Abrupt End to my Stride

I had struggled for three months to find my footing in a foreign country and was just barely finding my stride when it was all ripped out from under me.

The Eerie Flight Home

I flew out mere hours before London went into its first lockdown. I didn’t think I would make it. On the plane home, I sat alongside other students in nearly the same predicament as me.

The flight home was eerie. No one coughed throughout the eight hours we were in the air, desperate to appear healthy to our fellow passengers. My seat buddies and I shared hand sanitizer, which was being price-gouged at the time.

Rebuilding and Taking Care of My Mental Health

When I finally got home, I decided not to complete any more schoolwork so I could prioritize tending to my mental health. I failed the semester and had to take an extra year of university as a result, but those few months were the calmest I’ve ever felt.

A Level Playing Field

Come September, I returned to my home university through online classes. It was immediately evident that this was finally a method of teaching that could accommodate my disabilities that had long gone unaddressed in academics. Given the challenges that naturally arose trying to complete a music degree through a platform that couldn’t handle synchronous music making, this was the first time that I felt like I was on a level playing field with my peers.

It stung that it took the world stopping in its tracks to finally be accommodated, but I was grateful for what was now the new norm. I had hope, as many did in the first year of the pandemic, that organizations would see these methods of online dissemination and use them for future disability accommodation.

Disappointment From My School

Looking back, perhaps this was naive. My school decided to return to in-person classes halfway through the winter semester of 2022. I reached out to my accessibility advisor as soon as this was announced, aiming to continue classes online. She said that that would not be possible, and after some gentle but persistent pressing she finally admitted, "the school makes money from students being on campus."

I felt abandoned by the accessibility centre that claimed to be my advocate. Frustrated, I reached out to each of my professors individually and came up with a plan to either have the in-person lectures recorded and posted online or be streamed over Zoom in real time.

The Struggle to Attend In-Person Classes

I tried a couple times to attend classes in person but found it near-impossible to go more than once a week without gambling my physical health and quality of life.

Exhaustion and Disillusionment

I graduated in May of 2022, exhausted by unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles and fully disillusioned by academic institutions. I remain grateful, however, to the individual professors who had done their best to make right what the university itself would not.