My day in the lab as a disabled person, a thread (feel free to RT).
I have cerebral palsy, autism (which I normally don't publicly admit), ADD and a learning disability. I'm also profoundly visually impaired. Those involved in #wormgate though it was ok to compare that joke to mocking the disabled.
This is just a form of tokenism from people who have NEVER in all their professional career, lifted so much as a finger to help this community.

Because some professors think it's ok to double down, I thought I'd do the sensible thing, and take you through my day in the lab.
Buckle up, kids. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

I get up at 4:30 am because, you know, shifts in the time of COVID. I cannot and will not ever be able to drive, so I need to beat the clock to catch the safe ride shuttle.
When I get to work, I need to outline tasks twice. I also need to make sure protocols are in a written, accessible format. When that's done, I get to work. Genotyping takes an entire day, because my dexterity is so poor. In this lab, I get electronic pipettes-but those are a
Luxury. qPCRs, westerns, RNA isolations, all take me 12-15 hours to someone else's 4-6. Time is a luxury. If I have staining to do, this also takes a long time because it is profoundly hard to coordinate tasks. Scope work and cell counting also takes a lot of time, sometimes
Time the task doesn't allow. So I have to start over and over. I have minimal depth perception and can only use one eye at a time, so quantification also takes ages. Z-stacks are a nightmare, because I don't have enough vision to tell what I'm looking at, between them or
with composites, to do this task in less than six hours. I hope a picture is starting to emerge, because my work week has to be 60 hours at a minimum to be successful. "ThAt'S nOrMaL" you say. Hang on. Just wait for it.
"small" tasks like arranging tubes takes forever. But even though, after busting my ass, I can get my shit done, the extra time and effort isn't the whole story. There's more-so much more.
Every time I step into a lab, I have to request accommodations. This will surprise literally everyone who is not disabled because y'all are CLUELESS about this, but MOST labs are NOT set up to provide them. Despite being an ADA violation, most PIs will refuse.
You can fight it, but many states have caps on damages for these kinds of suits. Good luck hiring a lawyer if you're poor. They won't do it even on contingency. So, people get away with this behavior because they want to. Because they can. The ADA does not save us. It doesn't
Change our circumstances. But say after fighting with your access consultant or whatever, you get your accommodations. This isn't the end. Most of my lab mates have not understood disabilities. Mostly, it's ok. But there's one or two who will I SHIT YOU NOT, hang around
When they notice you're different. They'll watch your hands shake when you pick up tubes, or watch you struggle at the scope, and they'll make sure to cause a fuss. The PI will inevitably find out. And yes, even after knowing I'm disabled, I'll have to defend my right to
Exist in a space, for no other reason than other people around me are bigots. The matter may seem settled, but I'll spend the rest of my time planning my day around others. Can they see me? Do I look too disabled to be here? When does person X come in? I have to be done with
This task so they don't see my hands shake, because I'll get in trouble. Who is it safe to ask for help from? How long before they will no longer provide fine motor assistance? And of course,
How do I get my PI and lab mates to like me? In the time I have been open about my disabilities in STEM, I have been mocked, called retarded, had reagents and pipettes hidden from me, and told I take up space that could go to other students. And nobody cared.
You'll never be disabled in a lab and viewed as equal or as good as your lab mates, no matter whether or not you work twice as hard. It doesn't even matter if you're smart. I am, but I'm still not as valuable. My repertoire of lab techniques, ability 2 work largely independently
and ten years of experience, should all make me an asset. But once people realize I am different, that I am disabled, NONE of that matters. I'll never be good enough.

And then after busting my ass for WELL beyond 40 hours a week, I go home (dodging traffic the whole way because
I literally cannot see cars coming and am relying, erroneously on the fact that they'll stop at red lights for people in cross walks), and start my school work. My grad program isn't like the one you r prob used to. I'm taking 10 credit hours, but these classes are
Not just seminars you prepare a paper for. I have exams, quizzes, and an average of 6 essays a week. If I'm lucky, I'll study for my MCAT, but more often than not, there's no time left. I have to record and listen to lectures, and type them up verbatim bc of my disabilities.
I ALSO have to fight for MCAT accommodations, and every semester, for new accommodations in the classroom. More often than not, professors will refuse them. Doesn't matter how small they are, they'll refuse.

Then I have to do household chores. Not driving is a hardship
especially on my salary, because Ubers start to add up. I obviously don't have much muscle tone, but I have to find a way to get things up 4 flights of stairs by myself. Hundreds of pounds of furniture when I moved in? Had to do it. Alone.
The medical bills start to add up, too. And I'm not paid enough for all of this. Every month, I make a choice. Which utility do I pay? Which do I put aside?
It impacts every part of my life, and there is no help. Not if you're high-functioning. If I try to tell faculty about what it's like to be disabled, in hopes that they'll do better. They tell me they don't have time, that I'm exaggerating. That they don't care. That it's not
their problem. And I get confused, because I see them tweeting about equity. I realize, they don't mean for the disabled. Sigh.
And my god, employment. Don't get me started. I CANNOT just go and get any job. I have to decide where I can afford to live, where has public transit, and who can provide accommodations. I have to decide when to disclose, because doing it too early will leave me unemployed.
I have to decide how much money I have to move. This always comes from student loans. I grew up in poverty, and I'll never get out. I'm over 200k in debt because I have to just take on more and more to get by.

You get trapped because you have to keep getting degrees and
taking on more loans to make a living, but then your bills are too high to do that anyway.
And there always has to be an exist strategy. You have to live somewhere with more than one opportunity.

All this to say, my dear #wormgate participants, that when you compare a JOKE about c. elegans to mocking disabled people that you don't actually care about,
you're a horrible human being. There's no excuse.

Be thankful you don't have these problems. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

#AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter #ScienceTwitter #SciTwitter #Academia #Research #HigherEd #STEM #STEMEd #HigherEducation #GradSchool #Science
Just so y'all know how little help we get, I reached out to the coordinator of this research program for undergrads where I finished my BS. She deadass told me I was like, clearly confused about my goals when I asked if she knew any disability friendly labs.
Then she told me I was welcome to speak to academic advising, instead. It was part of this woman's title to assist students in this manner, but she obviously didn't want disabled students doing research. Director of undergrad programs admitted she was just trying to pass me off.
I reached out to my director of undergrad programs as well. I told him that when I would ask faculty to honor the testing contracts THEY FUCKING FILLED OUT, they refused. This was common. He told me he KNEW about this problem, and that academic advising would handle it like, as
An issue. I guess it takes too much time to tell faculty to honor their testing contracts or run afoul of the ADA? He didn't care.
One of my FAVORITE instances was when I spoke to the PREP program director at that institution. Just so y'all know, it's an NIH program aimed at increasing participation of racial minorities, those of low SES, and disabled students in STEM.
I sent her 8 emails over six months. This lady couldn't be fucking bothered to just tell me if she wasn't sure they'd have funding.

Faculty also recommended I drop their class when I asked for accommodations.
People believe we have access to all these resources for minorities and all this support, when the reality is, faculty OPENLY discourage us from persisting in STEM. This isn't just the crotchety old Emeritus professor, these are some of the people you put on a pedestal and
Least expect it from. The people who supposedly care about diversity in STEM.

I need people to understand how serious this is, and how OPENLY, BLATANTLY hostile higher ed is for disabled folks, especially in STEM. It's not that people don't know, it's that we're
Not worth as much as their able students, and they don't care.
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