Transition Guide: Students With Disabilities
Chapter Three: Advocate for Yourself
Communicating your needs effectively involves a number of factors. Students with disabilities who succeed in college generally possess the following characteristics:
- Ability to articulate one’s talent and abilities clearly
- Knowledge of the nature of one’s disability, and the kinds of teaching strategies, tools, and services which best help one compensate
- Ability to explain both talents and needed compensatory strategies, clearly and frankly to others
- Maturity and initiative to assume the greater share of one’s own advocacy
- Adherence to effective, routine study habits to whatever degree is necessary for success
- Initiative to seek assistance for academic and other problems as appropriate
- Acceptance of the idea that it may take longer to graduate than one’s friends, and that he/she may have to study harder than friends do.
- Recognition of the concept that postsecondary education is meant to be a challenge and that temporary frustrations are a part of the normal growth process.
- Regular, frequent communications with parents, friends, instructors, academic advisors and support service personnel are all part of taking responsibility for one’s ultimate success
It has also been observed that the college-level student with a disability must be self-reliant and able to cope with ever-changing challenges of daily living. Students with disabilities who have come to rely heavily on both parents and teachers to direct them and manage their lives may have difficulty adjusting to the demands of college.
Thus, as a student, the task is to find ways to work with the chosen institution that will permit the student to stretch and develop talents, interests, and abilities while at the same time being respectful and supportive of needs.
Virginia Department of Education, Student Services.(June 1993) Directory of Postsecondary Opportunities for Students with Disabilities at Institutions of Higher Education in Virginia.
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Distance Education
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