What to Buy Your ND Friends

November 16, 2025November 16, 2025 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

As we head into the holiday gift-giving season, I thought I would make a list of some cool things to buy the neurodivergent in your life. I posted about this last year on Bluesky, and a lot of people found it helpful, so I thought I might share it here.

Disclaimers: the links are affiliate links, so I get a little kickback if you buy anything. Also, every neurodivergent person in your life is different. These are base ideas, not something that will appeal to everyone. The idea is that you can take these and use them as a springboard for buying things for others or padding out the gifts you plan to get them.

Silicone plate dividers– These silicone plate dividers keep your wet food and dry food from touching. They’re dishwasher safe and come in multiple colors.
A divided cereal bowl– A divided cereal bowl keeps your cereal and your milk separate. It’s a great way to avoid soggy food. Also useful for yogurt and toppings or just having chips/dip that don’t touch.
A dip holder– I promise this is the last food related one, but keeping your wets from touching your dries is always a thing. This is a little container that clips to your plate and will hold your sauce.
A weighted blanket– This one comes in lots of cute colors and patterns. I do suggest getting a cover for your weighted blanket, so you don’t need to throw a 15 lb blanket in your washing machine (it is chaos)
A duvet cover for the weighted blanket– This is so you don’t need to throw a 15 lb blanket into the washing machine (it takes FOREVER for them to dry if you do and will make your washer and dryer shake/walk, trust me this is worth it).
A shark robe/snuggie thing– If you’re friend is trans and ND, this is a silly one but trust me on it, they’ll think it’s hilarious. Plus, being able to pull a giant hood over your head is just chef kiss
The Comfy– My partner swears by the Comfy when they’re overstimulated (and perpetually cold). It’s oversized, and you can basically crawl into it or pull the hood over your head. It’s soft, warm, no weird fabrics or irritating strings.
A moon lamp– Sometimes you just need to lay in the dark with some soft colorful lighting. This lamp has a clicker with different colors. It’s very peaceful and aesthetic, especially if they’re into space stuff.
A human-sized dog bed– Do you like floor time, but you have the back/neck of a 30+ year old? Try the human sized dog bed.
A Japanese futon/tatami mat– Same idea as the human dog bed for floor time, but it’s easier to roll up and put away. It’s also more expensive, though bigger.
Color, Taste, Texture by Matthew Broberg Moffitt– A cookbook to help with someone who has food aversions/sensitivities by helping them figure out what they can/can’t tolerate and building from there.
Loop earplugs– to lessen sound without making you completely unable to hear. They come in many colors and levels of blockage.
A hug blanket– If you aren’t a fan of weighted blankets but like compression that isn’t too hot, this is a good alternative as it’s much lighter and more like a sleeve.
A timer cube– I like them for getting past bad executive dysfunction or for telling myself, I just need to clean for 15 min, etc. Caveat: the noise is hideous, like an alarm clock.
A grocery list pad for the fridge– If you forget what you’re out of, I like to put this on the fridge with a magnetic pen, so I can mark off what we’re out of when I notice. It’s a good way to avoid a 5 soy sauce bottles situation.
Safe and Sound by Mercury Stardust- Not necessarily ND specific, but I like being able to do things on my own with clear, step-by-step written instructions and accompanying videos. The Trans Handy Ma’am’s book has been helpful with basic home repair.
Noise-cancelling headphones– because noise = overstimulation. Some are far more expensive, but these are a good basic pair. They can get SUPER pricey
Other ideas:
- Buy things relating to their special interest.
- Give them a gift card to a place they like if they don’t like surprises.
- Do not buy an experience with a date unless you’ve talked to them about it before.
- More of their [nonperishable] safe food.
- Ask them what they want. We appreciate it.

Uncategorized

Acceptance, Not Awareness

April 13, 2025April 13, 2025 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

Every year I look forward to April with equal parts anticipation and dread because it is Autism Acceptance Month. Note that I did not say Autism Awareness Month. As an autistic author who has written a series with an autistic protagonist, I love being able to promote my work and have people read a story from the perspective of an autistic character. Seeing other autistic authors promote their work and being able to connect with them means a lot to me. Within the community, it’s a great time to share resources, connect with others, celebrate our unique weirdness, but outside the community is another story.

In 2025, everyone should know what autism is. We are past the point of awareness, and with the awareness of neurotypical or allistic folks comes ableism and eugenics. If you don’t know Autism Speaks is an organization that calls for an end to autism, which most autistic people take issue with for obvious reasons. They promote ABA (conversion therapy for autistic people that most autistics oppose), they talk over autistic people in favor of promoting allistic caregivers/parents, and they discuss autism in terms of deficits or geniuses, which is problematic. The worst part is that they are one of the loudest voices during April. They are the ones promoting blue light bulbs and puzzle pieces.

The awareness that Autism Speaks and other parent-centric organizations bring is often riddled with eugenics and deficit-centered language. We are talked about only in how our existence is a burden to others or how our neurotype disturbs those around us. Bringing awareness to our neurotype in this way is like only talking about an amputee in terms of what they can’t do without their arm or leg. It is important to discuss the difficulties disabled people face in their daily lives, but we shouldn’t only discuss the far ends of the spectrum: how burdensome we are and inspiration porn.

This is where Autism Acceptance Month comes in. The idea of acceptance is that we accept all of that person, struggles, good days, bad days, things we’re good at, our humor, our communication styles, and the things that make us different from neurotypicals. Accepting autistic people pushes back against the narrative that organizations like Autism Speaks promotes that we are burdens or problems that need to be solved. If we are accepted as just a different neurotype, then we are equal with allistic people, and in turn, they should also be willing to bridge the gap to aid in meeting our needs rather than the onus falling on autistic people. Things like ABA therapy are basically obsolete because their whole premise is to make autistic people appear to be neurotypical while forcing autistics to disregard their needs in favor of what allistic people want them to do. If autistic people are on equal footing with allistics and are accepted, there is no reason to essentially dog train an autistic child into not stimming or ignoring that the lights of hurting their eyes. We can simply let them do their thing as long as they aren’t hurting themselves or dim the lights a little.

If we acknowledge that a lot of what allistic society dislikes about autistic people is that they are “weird” or doing something that they feel they cannot do in polite society, like be direct, wiggle, not disregard their sensory needs; society as a whole will be better for it.

Everyone deserves to have their needs met and to communicate in ways that get to the heart of the matter even if it makes others uncomfortable. Society as a whole needs to take a hard look and ask itself why does directness bother you? Why does stimming make you so uncomfortable? Why it is a bad thing that someone needs dimmer lights, headphones, or comfortable clothes in order to function? Why does having “childish” interests or a weird special interest have to be a bad thing? Overall, why do you even care?

So much of the pushback stems from people who are uncomfortable that someone else is saying, “No, I need this or want this, and I’m going to do it” rather than demurring and conforming. Our society is so obsessed with conforming that the reason autistics stick out so much is that we are terrible at it, but the better question is why are you all doing it in the first place? If something doesn’t jive with your in terms of fashion, food, office politics, etc., why do you force yourself to do it instead of questioning how we got here and what the point is?

Our society is riddled with systemic issues, and peeling away the notion that we have to conform to whatever is the norm is the first step in freeing ourselves from these systems. Stepping back can show you the cracks and the deep fissures that cause others so much pain, not just for autistics but anyone who isn’t the white male cis het majority. Acceptance of our differences instead of the awareness of our differences is far more freeing and can ultimately lead us down a much better road.

Personal Life

On Gender

April 28, 2024April 27, 2024 Kara Jorgensen2 Comments

The other day I was listening to the audiobook of Threads of Life by Clare Hunter, and there were several instances in her book where she discusses the synergy of cis women working together and relating to each other in a space all their own. Listening to it, I was puzzled that people experience that kind of synergy or easy relation. I often chocked up my discomfort to being autistic. By nature, I’m not particularly good at “blending” with neurotypical people. As Hannah Gadsby talks about in their comedy shows, being autistic is like being the one sober person in a room of drunks; you constantly feel like you stick out.

But it runs deeper than the autism. I’ve never felt like a woman. People would talk about womanhood or what women want or feel, and I would feel my eyes glaze over. Cannot relate. At an abstract level, I get it. I can see and understand what other people in the same way I can say people can be the same gender and be very different people. The problem is woman has always fit like an outfit two sizes two big. It just sort of hung around me with no shape, and the shape people tried to give it didn’t make me feel good about myself or make sense in terms of how I see myself.

That has always been the bigger issue for me: how people perceive me. The lack of control over other people’s assumptions is a burden I constantly struggle to deal with. Any time I get hit with “ma’am” or “miss,” I can feel my soul curl like a shrimp. I’m lucky in that I’m an adjunct college professor, so most of the time, I get called “professor,” which is blessedly neutral. There are assumptions that come with being a woman or man, none of which I want or live up to. If I tried to ascribe to either, I would always be failing, falling short of someone’s idea of what I should be.

The best way I can describe my gender is neither or none or femininely masculine. One of the reasons I gravitated toward Stede Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death is because he hits the right gender buttons for me. He is a queer, autistic man, but he’s quite feminine and fussy compared to the other male characters. He wears bright colors, loves a luxury fabric, and isn’t clinging to traditional masculinity. I look at him and see gender inspiration. Same with Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire, though I’m far too silly to embody that fully.

I joke with my partner that “weird little guy” is my gender. Can a gender be queer? Not genderqueer, per se, but slightly masculine in a queer way, not a cis het guy way. Mostly, I use agender or nonbinary as the closest labels I can get. I add lightly masc because if I wear anything too feminine, I get dysphoric. Truthfully, I’d rather toss gender out the window as an unnecessary nuisance. The people I tend to vibe with most tend to be neurodivergent nonbinary people because I think we look at gender differently than neurotypicals. Autistic people are more likely than the general population to be trans or nonbinary, and that’s probably because gender is made up. We hate when people make arbitrary rules or try to create hierarchy, so why would we let made up gender rules get in the way of living our best lives?

While in the past it may have bothered me that I didn’t vibe fully with cis men or cis women, I’m more than happy to vibe in the agender autistic/ADHD club with the rest of my friends. I may never feel the synergy people talk about, but I feel at peace and at home where I can talk about my special interests, not be chastised for a verbal fumble, and not be judged for the parts I came with. For those people, I am eternally grateful.

Personal Life

Kara Struggles with OCD

September 10, 2023August 26, 2023 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

I’ve known for a while that I have OCD. It’s a very common comorbidity with autism, and they feed off each other in the worst way by tapping into that obsessive, hyperfocused piece of autism and strapping an anxiety rocket to the back of it. Once it starts, it’s very hard to stop.

To me, anxiety feels like I’m overwhelmed; the world is too much. OCD feels like my brain is hurtling through my thoughts at 100 mph in a hyperfocused yet constantly shifting feedback loop. It makes it nearly impossible to focus on one thing for long, so I just hop from thing to thing until my brain exhausts itself, gets anxious again, and the process repeats because checking/obsessing gives it a dopamine pay-off to cancel out the anxiety. The worst part is that when it’s bad, I’m not always cognizant that’s what this is, especially if there is an active source of stress. The incident that has kicked off this post was caused by someone and a perceived (real or imagined) threat, so it wasn’t illogical to believe I needed to do something to stay safe. The problem was anxiety about feeling unsafe because it seemed like someone I had blocked was creeping on my social media quickly snowballed into an obsessive downward spiral (whether that was true or not doesn’t change the anxiety over it).

I don’t like who I become when I’m obsessed like this. You know in movies/TV shows where the detective is tracking someone through storms and ridiculous situations no matter what danger appears, that is how being OCD driven feels. My brain would happily sacrifice actual safety to get what it wants, and that is terrifying in hindsight. It makes me an unsafe person when I’m in that hypervigilant state. The minutiae I would typically be anxiety-ridden over go out the window if I can feed the thought engine to go faster. Somehow my brain thinks hurtling toward danger is how I can make myself safe, as if I can think myself into safety because the solution has to be there somewhere. I just need to think fast and hard enough to do it.

Part of the problem is that I have trained myself to do this by accident. When I was in high school and college, I could ascend to a higher test-taking plane by working myself into that frenzied hyperfocused state. If you’ve ever seen Michael Phelps getting pumped before a meet, that’s basically what it looks like but internal. I could fly through a final exam in less than fifteen minutes and walk out with an A because I worked my brain into a state it was never meant to be in. After finals week, I would collapse into a pool of exhaustion and mild anxiety until my synapses cooled. The same thing happens now with OCD.

I feel the rug pulled out from under me when the source of stress is removed or I snap out of it for whatever reason. OCD brain v. normal brain is a shocking contrast, but when it’s been slowly building for weeks, you don’t notice you’re in trouble until you’re in the thick of it, which is the scariest part for me. My OCD doesn’t manifest as external rituals, it’s just internal cycling, obsessive chaos, which makes it harder to pinpoint and harder for others to notice and intervene. Plus, despite all the rest, I try to hide it if I think my partner is getting concerned about me. I shouldn’t, but unfortunately, it’s hard to admit to ourselves and others that we need help. I’m open about having anxiety and being autistic, but OCD is always seen so stereotypically that it’s hard to discuss it when it presents as a whirlpool of brain chaos and refreshing internet tabs.

Truthfully, I thought I could will it away. If I tried hard enough, I could magically beat back the OCD or pull myself out without external help, but it’s obvious I can’t. The problem with treating OCD and autism together is multifaceted. The most obvious issue is the cost and availability of mental health services. A lot of places have wait lists for evaluations, and no matter where you go, it’s going to cost you unless you have good insurance (even then, it isn’t cheap). The other major problem is that a lot of psychiatrists are not equipped to work with neurodivergent/autistic patients, so they end up either being ableist and patronizing or totally useless because your brain doesn’t work the same way as a neurotypical person’s brain. When you have a combo plan brain and one without external ritualized behaviors, OCD gets a little tricky to treat.

My hope is that in the near future I can get anti-anxiety/OCD medication that will hopefully help to tamp down these feelings or make it easier to disengage. It will probably be a bit as I research psychiatrists and figure out what my insurance will and won’t cover. In the meantime, I’m going to try to limit my time on social media and active Discords because, now that I’m less chaotic, I know those are part of the under-over stimulated feedback loop that sucks me into a checking OCD spiral.

I got off balance this year back in July when I had the jury duty panel week, and it wasn’t my smartest move to throw an intensive summer class on top of it, knowing I was working on my book and that other things could come up, which they did. I need to figure out the balance between making enough to live and not putting my brain into stressed out, OCD hell. In the meantime, I’m going to work on finding some coping strategies and supplements that might muffle the anxiety until I can make an appointment with someone.

Personal Life

Neurodivergence and Jury Duty

July 30, 2023July 13, 2023 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

Sometimes it’s easy to forget I’m autistic. I have sort of built a life for myself where my weaknesses are minimized and my strengths are (mostly) highlighted. My job allows me plenty of decompression time, I can sort of pick my time slot, and my schedule is very predictable 90% of the time. The problem comes when I’m thrown a curve ball, and I’m repeatedly reminded that the world isn’t built for my brain.

In the first half of July, I had jury duty. To be clear, I didn’t get picked, but I had to attend jury duty selection, which means a week of my life was put on hold with a metaphorical piano hanging over my head. The funny thing is, I think actual jury duty would be far easier for me to deal with than the selection process, but let’s talk about the ways in which this was not an accessible or smooth experience for me as an autistic person.

Faces on cameras

It is overwhelming for me to stare at 60+ people on camera and know they are staring back at me. When I taught remotely early on in the pandemic, I didn’t require my students to show their faces, and I didn’t show mine. Every face is a lot of data or background noise/sensory input to deal with. Being on camera, even if I’m meant to be idle while waiting, feels performative. I’m hyper aware of every micro expression I am or am not making. As autistics, we’re often penalized for our resting bitch face or lack of expression, so I sat there for hours schooling my face into something close enough to mild interest that no one would say anything. On top of this, there were no captions (if there were, I couldn’t figure out how to turn them on). It’s hard to understand people when Zoom is cutting in and out, and I assumed I could turn it on and never asked anyone to do so preemptively. Things got garbled, especially when I was trying to listen and not look at myself or other people.

Schedules? Don’t know her

This was honestly the worst part. I never knew when anything was supposed to happen, or we’re told one thing but other instructions contradict it. One paper says you will hear from us by 5:30 PM, the woman on camera says 5:00 PM. The orientation itself wasn’t bad, but it was 3+ hours of instructions and time killing followed by being stuck in OCD purgatory (more on that later). I didn’t know if I was allowed to get up and go to the bathroom or if I could run my dogs outside really fast. The same thing happened during the selection process when we were initially told they would tell us who was on-deck to speak to the judge, so if we needed to get water or pee, we could. Then, they stopped telling us and just started calling people. The flipflopping on the setup was frustrating because as soon as I thought I got a handle on what was going on, it changed. On top of this, you never know what day you can or will be called. They say check your email after 5 PM every day this week to hear about the next day. That’s a lot of time to have zero predictability in my schedule. By Wednesday, I had no idea what day it was and felt completely unmoored. I didn’t even know if there was a possibility of being called on Friday. The paperwork made it seem like yes while the judge that talked to us made it sound like it didn’t happen. Nothing makes sense in jury duty selection.

Checking OCD trigger central

I have checking OCD (I came to understand that’s what it was during a therapy appointment during the pandemic). It used to manifest as checking my dad’s Fitbit all day while he was at work to monitor his heart rate because the fear was if I don’t check, he might have a major heart event, not realize it, and die. Since he passed, my checking OCD has been mostly under control. On the first day of jury selection, they said the worst thing they could have to me, “Check your email every 15-20 minutes.” Now, to normal people, this translates to check your email at least 2-3 times an hour. My paranoid, anxiety ridden self took this as check your email every 5-10 minutes, don’t believe it, refresh it, do it again, and check your phone. I was so afraid that I would get involved in something and miss an important email that I basically sat at my computer from 11-4:00 (when I got an email from them) doing nothing but futz around on Twitter and check my email. Once I realized I got an email AND a text if they needed me, that curbed my checking anxiety a bit, but the feeling of being yanked back into that spiral was horrible.

Yes or no questions

I hate yes or no questions, especially when people demand it be a yes or no under penalty of law for lying. Logically, I know I’m not being hauled off to jail for not 100% correctly answering a question (note: I don’t mean untruthfully, I mean not correct), but the fear is there. It trips me up in answering things because I don’t want to answer in haste and lie, but then, I think too hard about a question and get confused. Have you ever taken a standardized test or read a government form and had to parse it out for 10 minutes because you think you know what it’s asking, but you don’t want to be penalized if you’re wrong? That’s the autistic experience of dealing with the legal system, and people wrongly assume you’re lying if you spend too long thinking before you answer. I, unfortunately, was called to speak to the judge to see if I qualified for a case. The questions that were asked confused me, and I said as much. “Would you be prejudiced against a defendant just because they’re a defendant?” I sat there for a second not understanding why anyone would feel that way, asked the judge to explain it because it made zero sense to me, only to realize that was exactly what they were asking. My favorite was the judge asking if I had any conditions or anything that might make it impossible to fulfill my duty as a juror. I have never been a part of jury duty, so I honestly have no frame of reference as to whether or not I would be a functional human being in this situation or if I would just power down and dissociate. It’s hard to answer when I honestly don’t know. If you say that though, people look at you like you’re crazy, so I kept that to myself but said something else that got me disqualified from the case.

Bonus: misgendering!

Always fun when you have to use your full legal name for something when it’s a name you never use. I tried putting (Kara) next to it and still got full named. In a pre-service survey they ask if you’re male, female, or nonbinary. I put nonbinary. I’m 90% sure I did. On Zoom, I filled in my pronouns as they/them. I wore something gender neutral, I moved my computer to only show me from the shoulders up, I had my hair pulled back. I did everything I could and get miss-ed and ma’am-ed by the judge repeatedly. Once he said, “men and women” and “he or she” repeatedly during his warm-up speech, I figured it was a lost cause, but it still was like the moldy icing on the already stressful cake. Before someone says, “Why didn’t you say something?”, we all know rule one of jury duty and the legal system in general is don’t bring attention to yourself.

Kara, what was the point of this?

This was not meant to be a rambling complaint-fest. I wanted to point out that something most people find to be a minor inconvenience is actually stressful for some of us. Obviously, there’s always the financial stress of missing work when you get called for jury duty, but in this case, it’s more so the mental stress and anxiety this whole process causes in people who need clearly delineated information, consistency, and predictability. A week of constant anxiety feels like overkill for such a mundane process, but that’s what it was. The worst part is, I don’t even know what accommodations someone could ask for if the process is supposed to be random. Randomness inherently runs counter to what I need, but I wish the expectations and schedule could at least be more clear cut and not taken for granted by those who deal with jurors every day. For jury duty to be the fair and equitable process it hopes to be (though we all know its not), accommodating neurodivergent jurors would be a great place to start.

Personal Life

On Classroom Accommodations

October 9, 2022September 28, 2022 Kara Jorgensen1 Comment

A post online the other day brought up something that hits on two major intersections in my life: teaching and being neurodivergent. The post talked about how professors/teachers need to stop treating students’ accommodations as charity they allow them to have and something that allows a marginalized person to participate more fully in the class/discussion/college community.

If you don’t know what accommodations are, they’re often things like giving a student with ADHD more time in class for tests or allowing a diabetic student to eat in class if their blood sugar is low. In order for students to receive accommodations in class, there are often a lot of hoops they have to jump through, such as having a diagnosis, getting a doctor to write up the accommodation, having the school approve it, having it passed out to the professors and signed off on, AND the professor still can sort of shrug it off. The student can always complain to academic affairs or whatever office deals with IEPs/accommodations, but that requires energy and cooperation from the office with no promise that the professor will ultimately cooperate or not hold it against the student for pushing back.

Something I instituted in my class this semester is a self-diagnosis policy. Often students who are autistic or have ADHD struggle to get a diagnosis as an adult or find getting a diagnosis could actually work against them (I have avoided an official autism diagnosis because you can be denied organ transplants among other things. Look it up; it’s an awful, ableist policy centered around “quality of life”). Since my classes are writing-focused, there aren’t tests, which makes allowing for extra time or other accommodations easier (no dealing with the Academic Support Center, etc.), but I have had students with anxiety, migraines, stomach issues, etc. who end up missing class more than the average student. My policy is now that as long as you keep up with your work and give me a heads-up, we’re good.

There’s some professor out there who is going, “But if I let one do that, they’ll all do that!” Shockingly, they don’t. They really, really don’t. I have had students reach out to me due to extenuating circumstances or medical issues, and so far, they always keep up with their work. The rest of the class continues on as is. Those who need it, use it. Those who don’t, don’t. If you’re not sure why this matters for quality of life, let me tell you the story of why I stopped going to a professional to get my hair cut.

As a little background, I have eczema crop up all over my body. In the past, before I started taking a biologic, it was severe, and it’s aggravated by chemicals, fragrances, etc. to the point that I only use one kind of shampoo. I also have sensory problems where things most people take for granted REALLY bother me. People touching my head or face is not a fun experience. The hair dryer is hell as it is hot, loud, but the stop and start of it just frays my nerves after while. Even a hairbrush running across my scalp bothers me if I’m stressed enough.

My aunt was going to one hairdresser who was younger and very nice. I asked my aunt to ask her if I could come to the salon with a wet head, so she didn’t have to wash my hair (aka avoid the shampoo and copious head touching). She agreed, and I went. Everything went great. My hair looked nice, and she even asked if I wanted my hair dried or left damp the second time I visited her, and from then on, we just left it damp to dry naturally. I have straight hair that dries quickly, so it looks fine after. Avoiding having my hair washed and dried made getting a haircut far less stressful. I actually didn’t hate it, though the talking throughout was less than ideal but doable.

The problem came up with my preferred hairdresser switched days and salons, and I couldn’t see her. I was desperate for a haircut before the semester started that year, so I booked an appointment with someone my other aunt used in the same salon. Big mistake. She ran roughshod over my needs. I came with a wet head, and she made me get my hair washed. I protested, and she just ushered me over the shampoo girl anyway. It caught me by such surprise that I just sort of blanked instead of fighting it further. Everything went downhill from there. My head already was itching. I told her what I wanted and showed her pictures, and she went rogue because a different length would “look better with my face.” I asked if she could not blow dry my hair, and she ignored me again. By the time I left, I was ready to cry. I was angry and frustrated that she ignored things she could have easily accommodated and completely overstimulated me. It’s been several years, and I haven’t gone back to get my hair professionally cut for fear that any accommodation I ask for will be treated like I’m being dramatic.

I keep this trip to the salon in mind when students tell me they’re struggling with something or need something to help them succeed. It isn’t “special” treatment, it’s creating equity in the classroom by leveling the playing field and removing barriers that would hinder a students’ ability to function. By ignoring an accommodation, at best, you’re making things harder than they have to be. At worst, you are actively harming your student. The hairdryer made me more overstimulated, making it harder to get through the haircut experience. The shampoo full of fragrances I didn’t want them to use actively harmed my skin, and I got an eczema flare on my scalp and neck the next day.

Something other teachers might want to consider when a students asks for an official or unofficial accommodation is that not every disability or illness is visible or consistent. I have IBS. Luckily it’s IBS-C, which doesn’t interfere too much with my life. Imagine having IBS-D and telling your professor you can’t come to a workshop class because you’re in the middle of a flare (aka frequent bathroom trips) but you will send in your feedback to your groupmates in hopes of getting credit. And your professor fires back, you look fine most of the time and to get credit, you have to be present bodily. Should your student have to disclose that they are worried about shitting themselves in class in order for you to let them do their work remotely? On the neurodivergent side of things, I don’t tell everyone I’m neurodivergent because people have some weird assumptions they will apply to you. If you say you’re autistic, people will treat you differently if they don’t know you and what you’re capable of. Students shouldn’t have to make themselves vulnerable and open to potential ridicule or ableism by disclosing specifics.

As we head into the middle of the semester, I want you to think about what your reaction to reading this was. My fear is always that someone says, “If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be here.” Why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t an autistic student or a chronically ill student be at school? What about their condition precludes them from accessing a good education? What makes their education less worthy than that of their neurotypical or non-chronically ill peer? The bootstrap attitude is ableist bullshit, and if you’re reaction was to question the student’s value or fitness, I hope you will seek out chronically ill or neurodivergent authors to work on yourself because you really don’t belong in a classroom if you’re going to actively hinder your students. To those who want to better support their students, I hope you will allow for unofficial accommodations in your future classrooms.