- Date posted
- 1y
When School Fails to Accommodate
I am a grad student in an online STEM program, and my career depends on my analytical skills, which mask my OCD. It has become debilitating (7 hours revising an email reply) and negatively impacts my social life (response inhibitions and shame) and my academic performance (excessive amounts of time spent on every task, resulting in easily found errors like unfinished sentences; cognitive impairments). Like, I have 7 planners and can't start a to-do list because it triggers my OC. My university is insufficient in my situation. Figuring out how to accomodate as a virtual student with neurodiversity/debilitating mental illness has been ridiculously exhausting. Despite communicating with every professor, the student accessibility services, and my department director, I feel like I am fighting an uphill battle alone. Everyone places such value in diversity, inclusion, and equity, but fail to actually have resources that support mental health conditions. Almost everyone I have contacted have no experience with OCD or how it works. Yes extended time of my due dates would be great, if it actually alleviated my anxiety and paralysis instead of extending masked compulsions. Asking chatGPT and trying to afford Grammarly premium is so far the only useful shit I've resorted to. I can't even mention AI because of how stigmatized it is from lack of information/tech literacy about it being a tool and not e-Satan.