Posted by CareBear04 on January 26, 2008, at 18:57:14
In reply to Re: medical accomodations in school?, posted by Gee on January 23, 2008, at 23:02:32
thanks both for the advice. i sent an email last week to the dean of students who basically said that there wasn't much leeway as far as curriculum requirements and that each professor can enforce his or her own attendance policy. she asked that i come in to talk about it, but if there's nothing that can be done, that's that. no point in spewing secrets for no purpose.
the suggestion of talking to the disabilities office is a good one, but in my current case, i wouldn't be able to even specify accomodations that would help. things like problems concentrating, remembering, and processing information, racing thoughts that cause more interference, difficulty motivating myself to attend classes, and just the general inability to keep up with the pace of life are definitely debilitating, but they're too vague to be addressed with any targeted measures. i guess what i really need is just some flexibility-- i don't expect special treatment with respect to a final grade, but i think it would help to be able to follow my own path to that end, meaning having the choice to miss classes for purposes of treatment and a way to make them up as best as possible by getting notes or handouts or lecture recordings.
i guess a big problem for me is the conflict between wanting to maintain privacy and wanting people to understand why i'm not performing so great. i haven't told any of my classmates or professors about my diagnoses. i know mental illness is far from uncommon and that people try to be understanding. but i think there are still at least a few areas that are not well accepted or internalized. i think people still distinguish between acute manifestations (e.g., she's depressed) and chronic conditions (she's schizophrenic/bipolar, etc.) i think the first is more readily seen as a temporal state while with the second, people have a hard time separating the person from the illness. i don't want the diagnosis to be the context in which everything i do is viewed. there were a few other things i wanted to say, but i dont' remember what they were... this is pretty typical right now...
anyway, thanks again for the suggestions.
cb
poster:CareBear04
thread:807509
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/studs/20070526/msgs/809079.html