Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

The less obser­v­ant among you may have missed the little parade I’ve been throw­ing myself over on Twit­ter, the last day or so.

To bring you up to speed, I give you this:

There are no words to describe how amaz­ingly pleased and immensely exon­er­ated I feel right now. Admit­tedly, had it have been any­thing less than a 2:1, I’d have deman­ded a recount. After all, I’m acutely aware of how many years I worked my arse off, how many tears I cried when I struggled, and how many late-nights-followed-by-ungodly-early-mornings I pulled when dead­lines loomed. But, I won’t deny it — to get a “first” really is the icing on the pro­ver­bial cake.

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I really wanted this.

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Des­pite being born with sig­ni­fic­ant phys­ical dis­ab­il­it­ies, I went to main­stream schools. I’ve always been pretty aca­demic and done well at school; when we were “streamed” into classes based on abil­ity, I made it into the “top sets” (with the excep­tion of Maths — at which I am really quite rot­ten). How­ever, hos­pital treat­ments, sur­gery and prob­lems with wheel­chair access often meant that I missed huge chunks of curriculum.

I lost all of my second year at Sec­ond­ary School (8^th Grade): I under­went com­plex, multi-level sur­ger­ies, was bed-bound for three months and then spent count­less months under­go­ing intense rehab­il­it­a­tion, physio­ther­apy and hydro­ther­apy, before I was in any state to return to school. When I returned, my school hadn’t banked on me now being a full-time wheel­chair user. For months, there were no ramps or access to cer­tain depart­ments; Music, Drama and IT/Computing were off-limits. I spent hour upon hour excluded from my own edu­ca­tion. At best: I was babysat by Sup­port staff whilst a work­sheet was shoved under my nose, at worst: I was marooned alone in empty classroom with noth­ing to do and no means of leaving/alerting someone should some­thing unto­ward happen.

At first, there was no access­ible toi­let. At all. Then, there was one, but it was used as a store room (as they so often are) and its lay­out and my pain-ridden, post-surgery body meant that I couldn’t use it without assist­ance. None of the LSAs were trained in or paid for provid­ing Per­sonal Care. So, for years, my Mother had to catch a lift to the school every lunch break so that I could use the toi­let, just that once, dur­ing my school day. If I needed to go before or after lunch? That wasn’t an option. But without my aunt and Mum self­lessly trav­el­ing every. mor­tal. day to help me, school wouldn’t have been an option.

That isn’t to say that no effort, help or adjust­ments were made to accom­mod­ate my needs; but that the cul­ture and fund­ing sur­round­ing them, meant that my needs were often not fully under­stood or given enough weight, which res­ul­ted in adjust­ments some­times being an insuf­fi­cient make-do of an after-thought.

Later, when study­ing for my A Levels at a local col­lege, I was unable to attend weeks and weeks of classes as the lift (elev­ator) had broken down; they didn’t opt to teach the classes in another room. Occa­sion­ally, a note would be sent down for me to read a cer­tain chapter and I man­aged on a couple of occa­sions to pho­to­copy someone’s notes, but without the con­text of the full lec­ture and dis­cus­sion, I was often left in the dark. Half-baked notes in another person’s short­hand and a dry text­book with no oppor­tun­ity to ask a tutor ques­tions was no sub­sti­tute for weeks of prop­erly planned and executed les­sons — espe­cially when exam sea­son was approaching.

I wrote to the Prin­ciple, in earn­est. Hav­ing recor­ded each and every class I’d missed due to the broken lift, I cal­cu­lated how many hours of learn­ing I’d lost — hours that I could not make up — the speed at which you have to bull­doze through mater­ial at A Level meant that there was little time for stand­ard exam revi­sion, let alone the sort of one-to-one that I needed to get up to speed. I appealed to him, not for some form of assist­ance, there was noth­ing that could be done. I just wanted some form of acknow­ledg­ment of what I had sac­ri­ficed as a res­ult of his institution’s ineptitude at provid­ing each and every mem­ber of their stu­dent body with an equal right to a full and unin­ter­rup­ted edu­ca­tion. Naively, I assumed that I’d get a rather limp apo­logy stat­ing how it was “with regret” that they’d received my let­ter, or some such flum­mery. In fact, I got no response at all.

There were some moments of pro­gress and suc­cess. Upon learn­ing that I’d enrolled in the Pho­to­graphy course, the head of depart­ment man­aged to secure the fund­ing so that a new, wheel­chair access­ible dark­room could be built in time for my arrival. I loved my time in those pho­to­graphy classes dur­ing that first year and would often spend my free peri­ods, breaks and days off work­ing in the dark­room on my pro­jects. I often needed a lot of phys­ical help, espe­cially in the dark­room with the chem­ical tanks and manip­u­lat­ing light­ing and tri­pods in the stu­dio, but I always felt as though I was as fully act­ive in the devel­op­ment of my work, just like every­one else.

How­ever some time dur­ing my second year, a stu­dent ques­tioned their grades (believ­ing that their work had been wrongly cred­ited to someone else) and happened to use my work as a basis for com­par­ison. In a fit of unbridled (un)professionalism, the Head of Depart­ment told that stu­dent out­right that my ‘A’ grade hadn’t been awar­ded based solely on the stand­ard of my work, but “because I was in a wheelchair”.

I was crushed.

Upon tak­ing my exams, addi­tional adjust­ments had been made. I required extra time as I write a lot slower and pro­longed peri­ods of using my hands causes pain­ful spasms in my legs and lower body. I was given unlim­ited breaks so that I could rest and do physio­ther­apy exer­cises part-way through to man­age my pain and fatigue. Such adjust­ments required my own indi­vidual exam invi­gil­at­ors and noti­fic­a­tion (and per­mis­sion?) from the exam boards. Could this have been a source of bias? Was my work presen­ted to the exam­iners for mark­ing with details of my dis­ab­il­ity and exam arrange­ments attached?

I didn’t know, but I was determ­ined after that point to ensure, as far as I could, that any achieve­ment bestowed upon me would be indis­put­ably the res­ult of my work and not my chair.

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Whilst all my peers chose their uni­ver­sit­ies based on their course and their grades, I’d been decid­ing on a uni­ver­sity based on the access­ib­il­ity of the build­ing and the care and sup­port I could get put in place. Again, my edu­ca­tion, my learn­ing oppor­tun­it­ies were play­ing second fiddle to my dis­ab­il­ity. When I dis­covered the Open Uni­ver­sity, I found that its dis­tance learn­ing attrib­utes allowed me to study in an envir­on­ment that would always be access­ible to me: my home, leav­ing me to con­cen­trate on my course.

Keen to avoid the pit­falls of my pre­vi­ous exper­i­ences, I opted for sub­jects I loved and that I could excel at without the aid of a PA “doing it for me” and dur­ing face-to-face tutori­als, I made audio record­ings of lec­tures so that I didn’t have to rely on other stu­dents’ notes. I was mind­ful to choose mod­ules that used con­tinu­ous assess­ment and pro­ject work as opposed to exams; that way, I could work my study at my own pace, around my dis­ab­il­ity, without the need for extra time, invi­gil­at­ors and spe­cial considerations.

If I was going to get this degree, I was going to do it my way.

Study­ing from home often meant rely­ing on my own motiv­a­tion and ini­ti­at­ive to get the work done as there’s no class­mates or tutor to peer over your shoulder and jivvy you along. The part-time nature of the course also meant that it took me twice as long to com­plete my degree than if I’d have gone to a con­ven­tional “Brick Uni”. But, some­times being Dis­abled does mean that things take me that bit longer; I have more obstacles to over­come, so I have to try that bit harder in order to accom­plish what appears to come oth­ers much more readily.

This degree is no excep­tion. Or rather, it is. This is mine, achieved not by proxy or via con­ces­sion that someone can then later use to belittle my role, mar­gin­al­ise my involve­ment and see my achieve­ment as “less than” rather than “as good as”. I worked for this, just as I have all of my pre­vi­ous aca­demic mer­its, only this time I feel utterly vindicated.

I finally got the chance to truly “com­pete” on equal foot­ing with my peers without unfair dis­ad­vant­age; I finally got the credit I deserve.