College

Ten free resources in college libraries that aren’t found on shelves

I mentioned in my other post about college libraries that I only checked out a single book from my college library while living on campus for four years. Even though I can count the amount of physical materials I borrowed on one hand (or rather…

I started using a blindness cane (also known as a white cane) full-time during my first semester of college while living on campus. As a student with low vision, using a cane gave me a tremendous amount of freedom and independence, accompanying me everywhere from…

Important addresses to keep in college, great for orientation and mobility instruction

When I receive emails from students and parents asking about free tutoring for blind and visually impaired students, one of the first things I ask them is if they have contacted the National Homework Hotline, provided by VISTAS Education Services. Founded in March 2020 as…

I lived in on-campus dorm housing for four years in college, and one of my favorite parts of preparing for the new school year was thinking about how I would decorate my dorm. While a lot of the items in my dorm room remained the…

How having both a laptop and desktop computer has helped me in my classes

When I think about high school and college classes that prepared me for a Microsoft PM internship, a lot of different classes come to mind outside of the requirements for my major. A program management intern should have a broad understanding of various topics related…

In 2019, I interned at Microsoft on the Excel team, where I helped outline the redesign of a feature that makes it easier for users to locate patterns in a given dataset. Someone had asked me about what I bring to work as a program…

Over the weekend, one of my friends sent me a video recorded by an active bystander for academic ableism who was showing a situation where a student was being berated by the professor for their disability. These types of videos are triggering for me to…

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…

I’ve had chronic migraines since I was in high school as a component of a then-undiagnosed neurological condition, which was later diagnosed as Arnold-Chiari Malformation Type 1 (also known as Chiari Malformation or Chiari 1 Malformation). Even though my migraines had a significant impact on…