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Myself: Hello, I'm Lucinda, an artist with disabilities. And you're listening to 'Our Stories'. In this episode, Kathryn's going to talk about what it's like to be a student with disabilities at university. Hope you enjoy it!

 

Kathryn: My name is Kathryn Sainsbury Wilkes, I'm a second year Marine and Natural History Photography student at Falmouth university. Originally from Birmingham but been living here for about a year and a half now.

 

I have quite a few disabilities, mental, physical, learning disabilities. Sometimes use a stick, occasionally use a wheelchair, for chronic fatigue syndrome, postural tachycardia syndrome,  anxiety and depression, and more that I always forget, dyslexia, but those are the main ones. My disabilities affect most aspects of my daily live, mostly just in terms of energy. Like getting out of bed, having a shower, brushing my teeth, and making lunch because we've already missed breakfast at this point, by the time I've done this I no longer have any energy to do anything else. It ends up costing me a lot of money. Because I get the bus everywhere instead of walking, I buy food when I'm at uni instead of making it before hand because otherwise i do not have the energy to come to uni.

 

It affects social situations because I'm always too tired to go out, or I'm worried I'm going to be too tired when I get there. So I say no even though I have energy at the time, I'm too worried I'm going to get stuck there. Queuing up, I can't stand in a queue because i cant stand up for more than a few minutes before passing out, so shopping in supermarkets horrible. I tend to make someone else do it for me or I do it in a wheelchair. Walking around town, again. if i have to stand still it will affect me then. It pretty much affects everything.​​​​​​​

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But the problem is with being disabled and a student, is not only does doing all the house stuff wear me out before i get to uni, I have so many other things that I have to do because I'm disabled. So in a day I might only have one thing on my timetable, but I might have a meeting with my dyslexia tutor, a doctors appointment I might have a blood test, there's just so much more people have to deal with when you're disabled that people don't realise. Not only is it harder to do what you have to do, you also have more to do than most people.

 

And I feel like being disabled you have to justify yourself all the time to people. Especially if you have an invisible disability, which most people do. The vast majority of disabilities you cant look at someone and know that they've got it. So you're constantly having to talk about it when you don;t want to talk about it. Sometimes you have to act like you're fine just because its too awkward to go through the whole hi I've got all this wrong with me.​​​​​​​

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I think one thing people don't realise is if your setting up something to help a disabled person, your not taking away from an abled person. Same with dyslexia, most of the things that i get tutors to do for me in their lectures because I'm disabled and anxious and dyslexic benefit the rest of the class not take away from them. So i think it's kinda mad that its not super set up for these marginalised people. There's very few things - I can't think of anything that would benefit me that would take away from an abled person.

 

Like most things are designed by a probably straight, cis, abled male and you can tell. being a female LGBT disabled person i can tell it's not designed for me. Everything for the daily routine is not designed for me. Just like there's no seats at the bus stops, and when you get on the bus there's not enough seats and no one offers you one because you don't look disabled. Going to the shop, it's intimidating, it's too noisy, stuffs too high or too low. Everything's just set up for abled bodies people, and you don't realise how much it is like that until you've got a disability yourself or you're with someone who is. 

 

So I'm not a full time wheelchair user, but I stayed with my friend who is. We we're gonna go to the shops but there was a van parked on the pavement, and there was no dropped curve to get off the pavement, so we just couldn't go to the shops that day. Just little like that, never mind you get to the shop and aisles are too narrow and you can't reach. Even with me being a little bit disabled - I notice it. And with the whole university life as well, they obviously try and make it suitable for disabled people, but the fact that you've gotta live, look after yourself, and do university, is really against disabled people. But there's nothing you can do about that without really shaking things up. Because disabled rights are human rights and therefore you'd be mad not to. Especially being disabled and knowing disabled people, means I know what it's like, and I've got a reasonable idea for what it's like for a range of people in my situation.  Obviously therefore I want to help stick up for them.

 

If you're disabled in any way, try and have that conversation with your friends and make sure they know. But more importantly just if you know someone that is disabled, obviously don't force them to tell you about it, don't ask questions in a defensive mind set, don't ask questions to then pick at them. Ask questions to learn,   there's a difference between asking questions to learn and to accept. As opposed to  just pick at what's wrong. I get people asking about my disabilities, but then I get people arguing back about them. You know, don't do that. You see if someone's telling you something's wrong with them, or if you've asked them, actually try and think to yourself - okay how can I help accommodate this. Instead of thinking well you say that but I saw you doing this the other day. Which I get all the time.

 

Oh that can't be true because I saw you doing this, I saw you doing that. I'm so sorry that I had a good day last week, so just if anyone listening that knows anyone or if they're abled but they know people that aren't or just anything, just try and have a conservation, just try and understand it better. And try and just assume, when someones sitting down on the bus, don't just assume they're being lazy, maybe assume they have a disability. If someones doing something that looks questionable, maybe in the supermarket, they're just taking their time, don't get all frustrated. Think maybe there's something going on there, just expect it from people. Because so many people you know are probably disabled and you have no idea. So maybe don't go straight to judge, go straight to trying to understand instead.

 

Myself: Thank's so much for listening! Make sure to follow the 'Our Stories' podcast channel, for more podcasts coming soon.