Dorm / Campus Housing

Ten non-traditional/weird things I brought to college that have really helped me

Shortly before my second year of college, I received a few orientation and mobility lessons for learning how to navigate with low vision and a blindness cane. These lessons were helpful for learning general travel skills, but I noticed they didn’t get into specifics about…

When I was cleaning out my dorm room at the end of sophomore, I found four identical-looking bronze keys and had no idea what they unlocked. While I was able to figure out the purpose of one key, the purpose of the other three keys…

Products that help to make a dorm room completely dark for college students with migraines, based on my own on-campus experience

When I first moved into my new dorm in undergrad, I felt super overwhelmed as I tried to keep track of a ton of information while living on my own. By the time I would get back from classes, my visual fatigue and cognitive fatigue…

When I was in college, I found out that one of my friends had recently started using a white cane/blindness cane when I tripped over it while walking in the dining hall. Another time I helped a different friend look for their cane after they…

Ten staff members you should meet before or at the beginning of college

When I lived in college dorm/on-campus housing, the resident advisors for my floor would create dorm door signs and dorm door decorations for students that included their name and a fun design. There are a lot of creative dorm door decorations, and I received an…

Since I was in a tech-related major during undergrad, I became the default IT specialist and device troubleshooter for friends, family members, people who lived in my dorm building, and other students who had trouble using their computer or other mobile devices. Practical information technology…

During my in-person tech internship and while working in other remote positions that require me to sit at my desk a lot, I have experimented a lot with creating accessible workspaces for Chiari Malformation that make it easier for individuals to do computer work and…

Even though I didn’t live in a mobility access/wheelchair accessible dorm on campus during undergrad, I still used several dorm room disability hacks to make it easier and more comfortable to move around my dorm. As a student diagnosed with Chiari Malformation and then-undiagnosed POTS,…

While living on campus, I would typically order items online and have them delivered to me instead of going to physical stores. Since I have low vision and an unpredictable chronic illness, ordering items online in college required less energy than making an off-campus trip,…