Tips for Disabled Students: Preparing for University Life

If you're neurodivergent, chronically ill or disabled, and are heading back to university or going to university for the first time, this video is for you. I'm going to share some of my top tips for starting a new school year that I wish I had had available to me when I was going to university back in the day. Without any further ado, let's get started.

Watch the video below or read on for the full transcript.

Hi, I'm Cassie Winter. I help neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people struggling with burnout go from doing things the able-bodied, neurotypical way to the accommodated way so they can finally spend their precious time and energy the way they want and need to. So the first thing to understand if you're neurodivergent, chronically ill, disabled, and going to university for the first time, or you're heading back, is that you deserve accommodations. I think back to my university days, and that was before I was diagnosed with any of my disabilities.

I was still kind of riding the high of success from my K through twelve, and I didn't know that a really, really awful burnout was just looming in the future, and it was inevitable. At this point. I was in between cycles of trying to figure out what my diagnoses were, and instead of looking to myself with compassion and reducing my expectations for myself and seeking accommodations, I just pushed through.

I pushed and I pushed and I pushed and boy, did I pay for it. One might argue that I'm still paying for it. The point is that if you are not completely able-bodied, completely neurotypical, completely mentally healthy, you deserve accommodations to help you move through life. Whether that's in school, at work, at home, you deserve accommodations. And even if you don't have official diagnoses on paper that you can take to your school and be like, "hey, I have a right to

accommodations," like that can be harder if you don't have diagnoses on paper. But in your own life, you can still be kind to yourself and seek accommodations that work for you that are within the bounds of your control, and you have a right to that. I think if I had just had that one piece of advice, college would have been a lot easier for me and I wouldn't necessarily have had the scare quotes "academic success" that I ended up having.

But if it had shaved a few years of burnout off the end of college, that would have been life changing. And if I had had my diagnoses and all the accommodations I needed, and either gone through college slower, not in four years, or dropped out to do my own thing with the goal of preventing the almost decade long session of burnout that I had, who knows what my life would look like now?

So tip number one, you deserve accommodations to help meet your needs. Next step. Most campuses have a health center, and I recommend getting out ahead of stuff and just scheduling an initial intake appointment with your campus health center as soon as possible. So that way you are an established patient for if and when things happen. And that goes for physical health and mental health. It's easier when you're struggling to go get help if you're already an established patient somewhere.

Cause if you're physically ill or mentally ill, those circumstances just make it harder to do the administrative work of getting set up as a patient somewhere. So do yourself a favor. Establish yourself as a patient right away so they know who you are and it's easier going forward for when you do get sick or you're really struggling and you need that extra actual medical and psychiatric support. Next step, and this is particularly relevant for those of you who have diagnoses on paper, is to find out who's in charge of that at your university.

So go to your advisor, go to your department head, go to your student resources center. If there is like a disability access services center at your university, go there, find out how disability accommodations work at your university and make a personal relationship with someone in that department. So that way you can understand what accommodations you have a right to as a student with your disabilities. So that way you can seek them and have the assistance to have your accommodations met by those who may resist.

Because there, we all know there are ableist teachers and people in administration like they exist. And it's unfortunate. I wish it wasn't that way, but they do. And it's really helpful if as soon as possible, right when the term starts or before, if you can, to establish that relationship with someone at your university whose job it is to make sure those with disabilities are getting their needs met.

An example of something you can get help with is having that advisor help you draft an email that you can send to all of your teachers and have them, like, co-sign it with you. So you're not the only one being like, "hey, I'm disabled. I need so and so accommodations". It can be helpful to have the added social capital, as it were, of someone from the university endorsing your request for accommodations.

Again, it should not be that hard. You should be able to go to your teacher and explain your disabilities and the accommodations that you require, and they could be like, "sure, gotcha". And that's it. You move on with your day. Sometimes, and unfortunately, I think fairly often from the stories I've heard, it is more complicated than that, and I am sorry. It should not be that way.

For those of you that already have a relationship with that department in your university, could you let me know in the comments what the name of that department is or what the job title of the person who helps you at your university? So that way in the future, people can just go down in the comments of this video and see the different department names and job titles of people that might be able to help them when they're trying to figure that out at their own school.

Now let's talk about staying organized as a neurodivergent, chronically ill disabled individual at university. Like I talked about in my recent planner refresh video, there are two things that go into having an efficient, organized, helpful system for keeping track of tasks and time, and that is the organization itself. So whether you have a analog planner, like a bullet journal or a happy planner, wherever the information goes, your calendar, for example, digital or analog, your note taking system, whether you use Evernote or Notion, that is basically the external place where you're storing time and task information.

That's one part of your system. The other part is the routine for using and maintaining that system. Oftentimes people get frustrated that their system isn't working for them, when maybe it isn't necessarily the external information organizing resource that you use, be it analog, digital or some kind of combined version, the issue might be your routine to use and update it. Because I feel like that's the one that gets forgotten.

Like there's this underlying assumption that if you find the right system for you, the use and maintenance of it will become automatic. That is incorrect. No matter who you are, even if you are neurotypical and able-bodied, creating the routine of using and updating your system can be a struggle. So if you are neurodivergent and disabled, the routine part of maintaining an effective time and task management system is crucial.

I recommend learning more about that. So this video isn't going to be an in depth teaching thing, but I'm going to share some other videos around my head and in the description box below for where you can go learn more about what I have to say about finding the right system for you and how to actually use and maintain it. The routine that goes with it. One of my favorite concepts is the idea of cook versus chef, and that one you can learn about in this video.

So long story short, there's the actual organizing principle behind your time and task management information. And then there is the routine system that you have to use and maintain your system, so it continues to be up to date and useful for you. All right. It's likely that one of the things you're going to be doing when you start a new term at university is you're going to be putting everything on your calendar.

So all of your class times, your lab times, clubs and extracurricular activities, if you have those, and then probably all of your assignments. So that way you understand what you should be focusing on on any given day and time. Now, it is really important that you don't go straight to breaking all that down into detail. That is an important step. You'll get there, but the next thing you want to do after getting all that on is you want to schedule time off for yourself.

Mental health days, recreation days, rotting in bed days, depending on what your needs are. It's really important to schedule that in ahead of time, because what happens is if you don't, you end up just hoping for it to happen, and then it never happens. And then you find yourself looking to the end of the term like a light at the end of the tunnel. Because once you get there, then you can rest.

And that's a recipe for disaster, no matter who you are. This wasn't an option for me based on my disabilities and my needs, but I'm going to share it in case it's helpful. I had a friend in college who was taught to treat university like a nine to five job. And so they would treat campus like their office, and they wouldn't bring work home from the office. So they would get to campus, they would take classes, but they would do their work, and then they'd go home at the end of the day, and then they'd have the weekends off.

I realize that wasn't accessible to me, but I think that's like a really cool idea. And if I were to workshop it, if I were in that situation again back in university, I would probably try to create my own version of that to reduce the amount of workload I had weighing on me at home. Because that differentiation of space that I do work and schoolwork at school and not at home, that might be a helpful distinguisher from my brain.

But again, that might not work for you for many different reasons. I just wanted to throw it out there in case it gives anyone a light bulb. If it gives just one person a light bulb moment. Awesome. Back to the original point. Scheduling your rest, your mental health days, your recreation days ahead time. So you have stuff to look forward to, to enjoy, and also to rest and relax throughout the term, not just once it's over.

Because if it's just once it's over, then you crash and burn out for that however long you have in between terms, and then it starts all over again. And then if you're like me, you do that, and then summer comes along, and then you're just a potato all summer. And then you rinse and repeat the next year, and by the time you graduate, ten years of burnout is on your doorstep.

So that was me. So don't be me. Don't for me. Plan your rest, please. I give you permission. Please take care of yourself. This last tip might break some people's brains. It's just something to consider. If this isn't helpful for you, that's awesome, but it might be helpful for someone. That's why I'm sharing it. And it's challenging the assumption that we have to do 100% in every class

in college. I was raised to understand that it was expected of me to get straight A's. That was not fun. I was an English major. I minored in Writing and Film, and I still had to take Math my first one or two years. I was good at it, but I did not enjoy it in any way, shape, or form in this framework. If I could travel back in time, talk to past me, I could be like, hey, so math isn't something you want to be doing for the rest of your life, so you can put in less effort in this class and that would be okay.

That wouldn't have been the end of the conversation. There would be a whole bunch of like, "I'm sorry, what?" From past me, there would have been a lot of work on limiting beliefs and mindset and all that jazz. But the point being, when you look at your course load for the term, if already you can tell that it's going to be too much for you and too hard, the first thing to consider is reducing your course load over all.

Not taking all four or five classes, but taking two or three or whatever suits you. But if for any reason that isn't an option and you have to do a full course load based on your circumstances, the next thing to consider is which of these classes will I choose to put less effort in so that way I can have enough energy for the classes that I do want to put more effort into and overall be nicer to ourselves and not lead ourselves towards inevitable burnout.

If there's a part of you that was like, deeply insulted by me suggesting you do worse in a class. I suggest talking that out with a therapist. Or if you're in my program, The Action Navigator, bring it up on a workshopping call. I'm happy to work through that with you. A lot of accommodating ourselves as a disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent individual is challenging assumptions about how things "should be".

It's not easy. It may sound simple, but it is not easy. And it can be helpful to do this work again with another person, be it a mental health professional, like a counselor or a psychiatrist, or with a life coach, or with someone like me, a productivity/life coach. Because if we think about accommodations, like, I got my first cane recently and I have yet to use it. That is in part because I have been sleeping lots and lots of sleeping.

I have not been upright, and I don't leave my home very often. For the longest time, I never thought a cane was something that I needed, even though I have the same disabilities as many people who do have and use canes, and also of rollators and wheelchairs. And sometimes we cannot understand that an accommodation would benefit us until we can discover the underlying assumptions that are preventing us from caring for ourselves.

In the case of walking, the thing that I realized is, if I'm going a short distance, I'm fine. But I was at the zoo recently with, actually, one of my wonderful students was in town, and we decided to meet in person. And it was so special getting to meet one of my wonderful students in person. And we just went around the zoo together, and by the end of our time at the zoo, I noticed my balance was,

it wasn't very good. I was wobbly. Could I walk? Yes. Was I not falling over? Technically, yes, but it was a struggle. And if I had had a cane for the last leg of that walk through the zoo, I would have spent less energy, and the rest of my day and the next few days would have been a lot easier on me. So discovering assumptions that we aren't necessarily aware they're there, once we realize they're there, then we can challenge them and we can see if that leads us to better able accommodate ourselves.

The university tip was deciding which classes you want to be spending more effort on and which ones you maybe are willing to consciously spend less effort on on purpose, so that way you're not burning yourself out. And then the broad life takeaway is just challenging assumptions about your ability and capacity and what being abled versus disabled looks like. I fall squarely into the invisible disability category. Someone looking at me on the street wouldn't know.

I'm disabled and I need to learn, and this is something I've been working on for years and it's something I help my students with. But one of the things we can work on to help ourselves is challenging the assumptions about what disabled enough looks like to need accommodations. And my guess is if you're still watching this video, you haven't left, you're still here? It's highly likely you deserve accommodations to meet your needs.

I hope this was helpful. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a like a thumbs up. If you will subscribe, share it with one other person and you can go into the description box below to see other videos related to this topic to learn even more about how to take care of yourself as you head back to university. And if you're interested in learning more about working with me, the way I work with students is through my signature course, The Action Navigator.

It's everything I know about how to spend your precious time and energy the way you want and need to as a neurodivergent, disabled, chronically ill individual. And it's not just the course, it's also ongoing, weekly group coaching with me on Zoom and also a private Discord community. And the whole thing is lifetime access. So as long as I'm doing this work, you continue to have access to the program, any additional updates, and all the coaching calls in the private community.

There's no expiration date on it. And I also offer a sliding scale because I know money is difficult for many of us in this niche. So I want my work to be as accessible as it can be for everyone that I can help. Love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye. Wow. Fall 2024 I feel old. That when you look at your course lord, Lord? Course Lord. I guess that what it is, what your calendar is when you're in university.