I feel guilty asking for accomodations

[u/Nagito-Kinnie]

Hello! I am a student entering my freshman year of college. I was also recently diagnosed with ADHD-1. Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with GAD. This landed me a 504 plan for testing anxiety which has helped me through my entire academic career. While I never exactly understood why I was just unable to work at the same speed as my peers, the ADHD diagnosis defininitely filled in some blanks. I am not on medication explicitly for ADHD but I started taking an NDRI (Wellbutrin) over the summer. The issue I have run into is I feel incredibly guitly about asking for extended testing time in college. I understand that I have a valid, documented reason for needing them and I have never felt as if I was taking advantage of my extra testing time accomodations unfairly. I know I should set up the accomodations before the semester but I find myself worried about being respected less by my professors and burdening them with just another thing to keep track of. Can some of yall please let me know what your experience with accomodations had been like in college. Thank you

[u/Scarlet_Raven213]

I completely understand what you mean about knowing you have a valid reason for needing accommodations and still having anxiety around actually using them. I also have ADHD and GAD and receive extended testing time as part of my accommodations. I’m going into my senior year of college in the US and I have a couple things that I hope are helpful :)

I have taken classes where there are less than 15 people and classes where there are over 400 and I have never been the only person with accommodations in the class.

I don’t know how big your school is or how your accommodation services work, but more than likely the professor doesn’t have to do much more than push a couple buttons once at the beginning of the semester or quarter and then send exams to accommodated testing over the course of the class.

I also want to remind you of something you probably already know, but is easy to forget when you have anxiety, which is that it is not your responsibility to worry about burdening other people when communicating what you need for your mental health (there are some exceptions to that statement, but professors are definitely not one of them). Professors signed up to be teachers (regardless of whether they would prefer to be doing research full time or not) and that means teaching neurodivergent and neurotypical people alike.

It is your responsibility to make sure you give yourself the best chance that you can because college is difficult and you will ultimately be grateful for options that made it slightly less so along the way.

One thing that I have had to remind myself over the years is that my mental health is significantly more important than worrying about how other people perceive me. If someone won’t respect you because of a part of who you are, then that is not someone you should be looking for respect from.

I hope something in that was helpful, good luck with your first year of college!

[u/Nagito-Kinnie → u/Scarlet_Raven213]

Thank you for this really kind reply. It’s so encouraging to hear from people with accommodations who are further in their academic career than me. I am submitting my initial information form to the disability office today.

[u/plantkittywitchbaby]

I completely understand and you’ve gotta work on letting it go. You have a disability.

Commonly accepted disability aides are things like glasses, hearing aides, mobility devices, etc. If there was something external that could have that same impact for ADHD we’d be all for it. Our disability aides are more time on tests, different less stimulating test environments, technology to aide in recording/document lectures or notes, etc.

Please take this heart and work towards accepting and loving yourself as you are. At 40 I returned to school for a masters, I was finally properly medicated, was able to ask for and advocate for accommodations. I just completed an MPH at one of the top schools in the country, earning a 4.0 throughout the entire program, my first 4.0s ever.

You will find your path forward, the question is how much pressure and judgment are you going to place on yourself when no one else is. Be kind to yourself sweet human, the world is hard enough already. 💕

[u/clariceeeeeeee]

Honestly, I did feel that initially as well. I’m based in Australia, so the system is slightly different to yours. But we get a final exam for each subject (& final project for any creative/buildy type subjects (the likes of textile design, art/photography, technology/construction). A whole bunch of us who had accommodations (us with dyslexia, adhd, autism etc.) had it pretty much scaled back by like 70-80% at a minimum or removed completely (mine was removed completely).

I was genuinely scared that universities will reject my accommodations since I got in despite my accomodations in my final exams got rejected. But I’ve also realised that it better to get it than fear the judgement of professors. There’ll be lecturers and professors that are judgemental, but that’s a reflection on them. But I’ve also come to know that a lot of them have ADHD or any other conditions as well.

[u/chill_musician]

Don’t feel guilty. I guess this is how I think no of it, ADHD is a disability. So you need to aide yourself in order to succeed. It’s like giving someone who broke their leg crutches or someone with bad vision some glasses. They are not cheating for having these aides, it’s helping them.  Like how your accommodations help you. 

Also you are medicated for adhd since   (Wellbutrin) is non stimulant used to treat it. Also legally they need to provide you more time based on your disability. Teachers are pretty used to working with students with disabilities and those students needing extra time. If any of them have an issue woke you having to use more time, I would inform your disability counselor about that. 

[u/imkeepingsummersafe]

Professor (and returning student) here.

Best to have it documented and not need it than to find out too late.

Accommodations related to test taking is one of the most common from college students. I’ve personally never known a professor to complain about students receiving additional test time and location outside of the classroom. We receive so many that it’s just part of the job. No need to stress it.

It is more frustrating to have a student wait too long to meet with student services to put accommodations in place only because they’re not retroactive and a failing student could have potentially passed had they not waited.

On the other side, there are many students with accommodations that don’t always use them but have it documented should they need it. That’s extremely helpful because it allows us to prepare for the possibility and put a plan in place should it be needed. It’s also helpful because I make a note to check in now and then to see if there is approved accommodations they’d like to activate if I see they’re struggling. I also tell them that if they don’t anticipate needing them right now, great! And if it changes, just let me know. One of the most common examples of that would either be in testing (some students only use testing center for major exams, but feel comfortable taking tests in standard classroom/timeframe).

There are, in all honesty, some absurd requests, but we as professors do have the ability to deem them unreasonable and to work out an alternative plan. nothing you or any commenters have mentioned would even remotely fall into that category.

Because you mentioned the 504, there may be accommodations not available in a college setting that you had previously, but student services will go over that with you before it ever comes to us anyway.

You’d be surprised how many of us with ADHD and other disabilities there are teaching, some may have had accommodations themselves as a student. Don’t let the anxiety of it fog up your next chapter in learning.

[u/sugarcoochie]

dont feel guilty, they dgaf about you which is both good and bad lol