Episode 1: Amber's Story and Support Services

Amber, a student with a spinal cord injury, shares her experiences as a disabled student at UNLV. She discusses how her disability has impacted her academic journey, particularly in terms of writing and note-taking. She also mentions the challenges she faced with accessibility on campus and how the Disability Resource Center helped accommodate her needs. Amber advises other disabled students to pursue higher education despite the challenges, emphasizing the importance of perseverance and utilizing available resources. The podcast episode concludes with a farewell message. Hello and welcome to Disability Thrive. My name is Marla Silva. I am your host and please join us as we talk about the experiences that we have as disabled students and we kind of get into the heart of personal stories and our journeys. Today's guest is Amber. She is a business major and she is in her second year. She has a C4, C5, incomplete spinal cord injury and so we're just going to be asking her some questions. Our topic today is her personal stories and support services at UNLV. So Amber, why don't you introduce yourself? So my name is Amber, you know the letter, as the letter said. I have a C4, C5, incomplete spinal cord injury. This is a result of a gunshot wound to the neck. I became, you know, instantly paralyzed from the chest down and I just hit three years this October 30th. Yeah, I am a business major here at UNLV and this is my second third year of college. Thank you for coming and joining us today and talking about all of this. So I have a couple questions for you. So how has your disability impacted your academic journey? So I think, I think at first, the first two years of my my disability, I did feel I would say like, what do you call it? I would say like incompetent? In my like, physical abilities because I was getting stronger. And I think that, you know, once I made the transfer to a manual wheelchair, I did gain a lot of confidence. But as far as how my my educational career has been affected by my disability, well, I definitely do see it affects me because I, since I am a C4, C5, the dexterity in my hands. It's definitely a setback as far as being able to write on paper or you know, being able to take notes. Everything has to be voiced over or everything has to be through Siri or things like that. So I, you know, coming from someone who used to just take notes, I had to take notes to study. That was like the way I studied. It's definitely a lot harder now. But you know, we do things with the Disability Resource Center to compensate for those things. So the Disability Resource Center has been pretty good about, you know, accommodating for, you know, my disability. So there was, I had this semester, my first semester here at UNLV, I got all online classes except one, and my math class was in person at the Greenspun building. And there's only one elevator going up to my class, right? And of course, my luck, the elevator was broken the first day of school. Yeah, so that wasn't fun. So, you know, one time I was like, okay, I'm going to let it slide, like whatever, you know, things happen. The thing is, my brother would leave work early to come, you know, take me to school. And there was one day where, I think it was like the fifth week of school, maybe, we were rushing, you know, from the house to get here. And we get there and the elevator broke again. So, you know, the Disability Resource Center was great. They switched me over to an online math class. So now I have all online classes. But yeah, it was definitely something that I was like, gosh darn it. You know, and it's horrible because we try to go to UNLV, we pay all this money for the tuition, and it's like, we can't even access the buildings. Right. Yeah, no, definitely. And then, you know, I got so behind in school. And, you know, it was like a week, it was a week when they were doing the transfer over to online. We needed to get the approval from the math department. And I had fallen behind a whole week. So that was definitely hard. You know, it did affect me and my grades. Yeah, it's not fair to you. So what advice would you give to disabled students who are considering higher education, but may be uncertain about the challenges and opportunities involved? Yeah, so I think that, you know, when there's a will, there's a way. If you want to do something, you know, there's really nothing stopping you but yourself. At the end of the day, I think that my biggest, my biggest challenge is just getting out of my head. You know, everything is possible with your disability, anyone's disability. It's just, you know, you have to get out of your head, you know, and and really, you know, just push through those barriers because I think that I was like my biggest barrier. You know, definitely, you know, everything, you know, with time, I do think that I wasn't ready for school, maybe the first year and a half of my injury. But, you know, when there's a will, there's a way. So, you know, there's really nothing stopping you. And, you know, if there's someone thinking of coming back to school and they're thinking about it because of their disability, I think that they should just go for it. Because, like, you know, the Disability Resource Center, there's a lot of resources that would accommodate for our disability. I mean, sometimes, you know, they aren't the best, but they're there and they definitely did help me. So this is your call, guys, to any C3CNs or current students who go to UNLV, you know, do it, do it, regardless of how you feel and just get into it. All right. Thank you for joining us. That is our quick little first podcast episode and we hope to see you soon. Bye-bye.