Who sits next to a blind person without saying anything when you're supposed to meet a blind person?

[cosmolinguist]

New heights of ridiculousness from my meeting with this "mentor" yesterday. She said she was going to meet me at the main library, and ended up sitting next to me for half an hour, both of us waiting, me expecting that telling someone "I won't recognize you because I'm partially sighted, but I have a white cane so I'm pretty easy to spot..." would be sufficient, as it has been every other time.

Somebody came and sat down next to her with a white cane and she didn't even think to ask if it was the white cane user she was supposed to meet at this time and place.

She thought it was funny but my anxiety was quite high by that point -- I worried I was in the wrong place or something. She'd texted me to be like "Are you almost here?" and i'm like "...I've been sitting here for 20 minutes?" I had been half-ready to go home. I didn't know why I was there and this was just stressing me out.

Turns out, she's a psychologist or something and this mentorship/support is supposed to be for my "well-being." But all she did yesterday was ask me what course I was doing (and then ask me what that was), ask how much I can see (which I haaaaaate because acuity (i.e. how many letters I can read off the chart at the optician's) doesn't tell you anything about how tired I get, how important context is, the lack of depth perception, or how slow I am at visual processing). And I had to sign a bunch of paperwork and that was the end of our now half-hour session. My being is so well now.

She was terribly interested for me to book a room in the library for future sessions, in a kind of "students always do this for me!" way. I am fine with that (better than talking about my eyes where people can overhear, not that anyone would care, but...) but have never done it so had no idea how. She said we'd ask one of the librarians on our way out, so we did. He looked at us like a deer caught in headlights and said he'd go get one of the disability specialist librarians.

She had no idea how to book a room, it's nothing to do with disability; the guy just panicked when he saw my cane I think. But she was useful to talk to anyway; I managed to also wedge into the conversation the problems I'm having with online books that are just images and I can't download PDFs, and she told me who to talk to about seeing if there's anything to be done about that. She also asked me if I'd had a library induction when I proved so clueless about these rooms I was supposed to be booking, and I said I didn't know there were inductions. So she asked me to e-mail her with times I'm free and we'll sort that out. #

These were the kinds of things I'd been meaning to do anything but I find the library a bit huge and intimidating so had been anxious about it, and so at least I left on a high note rather than thinking it'd been a waste of time leaving the house!

Comments

[miss_s_b]

I did a LOT of facepalming reading this. How can they not KNOW that they are stressing people out?

[cosmolinguist]

I know! She's a psychologist (or counselor or something, I can't remember exactly but she did tell me, and I think it's psychologist). Who works with disabled people particularly. I just. The mind boggles.

[miss_s_b]

It does indeed.

[alithea]

Dear me!

But at least you got something useful out of it re the library, even if the supposed support person was anything but.

[cosmolinguist]

Indeed! Always good to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat. :)

[magister]

You're not wrong. Keep making notes for your future job as consultant...

[cosmolinguist]

Good point. I'll have a whole portfolio by the time I finish uni. :)

[worlds_of_smoke]

-facepalms- That's... a very special type of dense, isn't it?

[cosmolinguist]

So special!

[barakta]

You are allowed to tell the mentor it's her job or her agency's job to provide a room. It is NOT your job to book a room. This is a MASSIVE issue right now.

She sounds like a bit of a numpty to be honest. You can if you find she's not helpful ask for someone else.

I am likely to be in Manc at some point soon, lmk if a visit and a whirlwind "summary of all your DSA bullshit" is helpful. I used to do this for my own students so they knew what was what, cos TOO MANY things. Also feel free to say "no, fuck off!" :)

Well done for spooning that!

[cosmolinguist]

Other things I didn't go into here also made her feel like a bit of a numpty, to be honest. Nice enough, mind! But...

I am honestly wondering if asking for anyone else would really make a difference since I'm still not sure what help she's supposed to actually provide. When I first confused this with the totally different ~support~ Barry Bennett are offering me (the techie stuff, which is actually helping albeit slowly and I've had to chase them now too!), they sent me a PDF that's supposed to explain what this mentoring is, but actually it explained like a ton of different kinds of things which all get the same leaflet, so I was no less confused. Some of it was things like note-taking or library help, which would honestly be more helpful! I'm a bit wary of terms like "well-being" because they're unavoidably woolly -- what's my well-being like right now? I have no idea. Will I notice a difference after these sessions? Who knows!

It would be lovely to see you and have a summary of DSA bullshit, to be honest! I need to have an official appointment soon too, but I don't know what to tell them except "I need a summary of all this bullshit"! (Including "I am not sure who my advisor is any more!") I have been utterly left on my own to get on with things except when they need to do some admin -- get my consent to tell some new outsourced company that I am disabled, or whatever.

[barakta]

Making an appt with your adviser for them to explain stuff is reasonable too. I suspect "cos everyone is over worked" it is very much left up to students to ASK for stuff cos it won't be OFFERED but I am sorry no one explained that to you cos they're almost certainly very happy to help IF asked, but won't be able to proactively review you (which they would probably like to do).

Will email you when I know my Manc dates and will happily skimread your DSA piles of shite and help you summarise what is what.

I think you could easily say to your uni bod "I am losing track of who is who, I don't understand my DSA award and I am struggling mentally with keeping track and with reading and understanding the context of all the paperwork which is all happening on top of an academic course load".

I am also appalled that the mentor and company did not explain explicitly to you what the mentor is, the role title, which bit of your letter says what and their actual remit in a less waffly way. Sending you a generic leaflet is typically shite!

I realise how much of this I "Just know" now so my own recent uni experience was easy for me (and also I don't have reading challenges) but I remember as a student not knowing what my deaf support tutor's actual role/remit was cos if I had I would have used her more effectively than I did. She was the only one who wasn't a complete waste of space.

[cosmolinguist]

Thanks for this. I've been a bit hesitant to book a meeting (even if the reasons of lack of time and energy hadn't been sufficient) because I'm not even sure what to ask or what to say, I just have a general impression of "this can't be right" so having some words to put around that helps.

[barakta]

Any time.

Also happy to help turn vague waffle into concise requests. It's MUCH easier to do for someone else than yourself.

Used to do similar for students sometimes when supporting many of them to practice self-advocacy for the first time. That's how I started drafting little scripts they could use to "ask for adjustments/accommodations" in a polite way cos they were unsure and stuff.

[conuly]

I just asked the twelve year old. She thinks that's fucked up. Who the heck does this? Barely made it through the first paragraph I was so shocked!

[cosmolinguist]

I did vaguely notice there was someone near me also waiting, and had a moment of "what if that's her, haha" but just that that couldn't really happen, that's only in sitcoms right?

[silveradept]

Good that the library was at least helpful, eventually, even if nobody else, including the person that was specifically there to be helpful, was helpful.

[cosmolinguist]

Yes, I'm looking forward to her doing my library induction tomorrow.

[momentsmusicaux]

Christ, how did she not have the nous to ask you 'Excuse me, are you possibly the blind student I'm here to meet?'

[cosmolinguist]

I couldn't find any way to ask her that wouldn't lead to me swearing or flailing, so we'll probably never know.

Onky thing I can think is that she wasn't expecting someone in their 30s but a "proper" student? Though I seem to blend in pretty wellost of the time here.

[barakta]

Cos people are STUPID/ignorant...

People get hung up approaching a disabled person to ask "are you the disabled person I'm here to see" which is silly cos if An Other blind person they can USE THEIR words and say "nope".