{because it's 2am}

[kaberett]

At the moment I'm talking a fair bit with quartzpebble about how disorienting and terrifying executive dysfunction can be. We've both been offered PhD places at prestigious institutions, we're clearly both capable of doing very good work within the context of the academy, and yet some days we not only can't even begin but we can't reliably sleep schedule or feed ourselves. Finding diagnoses that explain it - ways that other people have spotted patterns that match our behaviour, that mean it's not an individualised problem of laziness or whatever - is an immensely big deal, and nonetheless I just keep on coming back to Onsind when they sing I only wish that I could find a way to accurately describe the effect that this has on me.

Internalised ableism, I suspect, is playing a role here; to large extent I've learned that feelings of shocked betrayal aren't a terribly useful response to one of my legs refusing to bear weight, and that neuropathy affecting my lower limb function isn't actually a moral failing on my part. I can even do this about obvious depression-related symptoms. But just the executive dysfunction...? Not so much.

I have no idea how to make this work with my job. I love doing my PhD and I love being in academia and I'm very, very scared about the extent to which being an independent PhD student, "not needing hand-holding" (or, less disparagingly, "being self-directed"), is valued -- because of all the ways in which I can't be self-directed.

Which brings us on to the stranger on the bus a month or two ago who decided that the wheelchair-using young lady was appropriate cripspiration and started telling me about how amazing it was I was leaving my house, etc etc, along with cheerfully recounting for me the story about how her father always said that "can't" is spelled w-o-n-t.

Over and over again (I only wish...) I come back to "can't" and "won't", to the difference between "this is not a thing I am capable of" (and, again, I find this easier to handle in terms of physical impairments) and "I am not willing to make the necessary trade-offs to do this thing", to learning to trust myself in setting and defending those boundaries, to being able to believe that just because I can pay a price doesn't mean I must. "Won't" is allowed. "Won't" is permitted. This thing, too, I may have.

Comments

[highlyeccentric]

Interestingly, I wonder if this level of (dis)functionality problems is something that would be lessened in the context of old-fashioned collegiate university life (not typically the most accessible of institutions - did i mention my undergrad college's wheelchair shower was only accessible DOWN A SPIRAL CEMENT STAIRWELL?). i know it took me quite a while to adjust to having to plan my own lunchtimes once I got into the real world - although I'd grown up in many ways at uni, college had carried straight on where school and mother left off in providing regulated mealtimes.

I suspect dining rights at St Johns College (USyd) are part of what kept my undergrad supervisor vaaaaguely functional for so many years. The medievalist crazyfolk gossip line says medical assistance is now improving the situtation, but still. I also know my dear boyfriend, who hates to think he might have Problems, only got dressed before midday the whole time he was in oxford because he could claim free lunch if he showed up at college by one.

That doesn't help you at all, but it might be comforting to think that there are some places where academic success does not require the ability to schedule one's own meals!

[fyreharper]

spiral. cement. stairwell. :boggles: that's missing the whole concept of wheelchair-accessible a bit, ey...