Throughout my academic career, my mental health has existed on a rollercoaster. Epic highs, where I love what I am doing, I am focused on the future, and my body and mind work in tandem; heart-wrenching drops below the earth, lights in my bedroom off as I spend multiple days hiding from my own thoughts; upside-down loops, where I do not know where to look, just that I am not where I'm supposed to be. It isn't schoolwork that is first to go - having been raised with an understanding of the importance of education, my brain prioritizes essay-writing over teeth-brushing, but as my rollercoaster cart dips below sea level, my school life suffers. My journey with mental health has been closely tied to my physical health. As a disabled student, it is not just my chronic depression and anxiety that affects my academic performance. Days of relentless fatigue, unending pain, and uncontrollable fainting make homework assignments difficult to complete; hour-long car rides to doctor appointments leave some space for math problems, but anxiety over test results quickly makes that "free time" null; and how can one be expected to turn in an essay when they can't even walk to the library? Any discussion with a disabled academic reveals the deep sense of isolation disabled people feel from their non-disabled peers, most of whom would never understand what it takes to juggle multiple chronic illnesses in a high-intensity academic environment. That isolation leads to greater feelings of depression, in addition to the anxiety created by severe medical issues and by being forced to endure ridicule and skepticism of their abilities from our ableist systems. Thus, a destructive cycle emerges - people with disabilities are four times more likely to have mental health issues than their non-disabled peers. Stigma is my greatest enemy in academic spaces. Mental health is not prioritized in high-intensity academic environments - this is not new information. Accommodations are shunned, deadlines are hardened, and longstanding ideas of a "real" academic remain stuck in the past, built on the image of a non-disabled, mentally-well male student. To survive and thrive in my academic life, I put great energy into countering the stigma surrounding mental illness and chronic illness, transforming decades of frustration into action. No actions are more important than community building. Community is the lifeblood of humanity - speaking to one another face to face, sharing meals, learning from each other, and sharing in our pain and triumphs are each a core human need. This past semester, I have made an active choice to step off of my mental health rollercoaster. I make my mental health a priority by joining groups full of people who understand my experiences and care about my well-being; I make my mental health a priority by advocating for better conditions for mentally and chronically ill students on campus; I make my mental health a priority by making unlikely friends and forcing myself to be uncomfortable. This semester, I have pushed myself beyond what I thought I could do, and what I found was a whole new future. It is a future of community care, patience, understanding, and social change. This future allows me to hold mental health as part of my identity in academia rather than hiding it behind false faces. With community, we are all stronger.

As someone with multiple chronic illnesses that make life a bit harder to endure, I am no stranger to ignorant statements made by non-disabled people. As a freshman in college, though, who had never had accommodations nor had to worry about being disabled in academia, an entirely new world of ableism opened up in front of me. It became clear to me that, even in higher education, the disabled community would always have to fight to be allowed a seat at the table. My first semester of college launched me into disabled activism at my university. I joined the disability advocacy group on my campus and quickly found myself at the center of a variety of significant projects, including improving accessibility and working to simplify the accommodations process, but the project I spent the most time on was the creation of a cultural space for disabled students. If you haven’t heard of disabled culture, you are not alone - the concept of medical issues having culture can be unfamiliar to those who have not experienced medical issues themselves. The reality is, though, that disability is just as much of an identity as one’s race, gender, sexuality, and cultural identity. Being disabled affects how one interacts with the world, whether that be planning for the future, trying to purchase a home, or doing things as simple as deciding where to eat or spend a weekend outing. As a greater community, disabled culture demonstrates these unique experiences. Adaptive sports, government, modeling, art, acting, science, advocacy - representatives from the disabled community fill every space in society, from Stephen Hawking, the English theoretical physicist, to Mama Cax, a Haitian model, to Marlee Matlin, an American actress and author. The lack of education about these individuals demonstrates a failing within our major educational institutions, a failing that affects disabled students most of all. My university has incredible positive changes to improve the experiences of racial minorities, queer students, and women-presenting students on campus, from providing space for them to learn and grow with each other to developing new courses that bring their stories to the forefront. But disabled students were left in the shadows. The space I am creating aims to fix that. Within this center, there will be several resources to improve the disabled experience on campus. Primarily, the center will act as a gathering space. Study sessions, movie nights, and other social events can provide disabled students a sense of community, validation, and support as they fight through a system not built for them. Information specific to my university, like how to get accommodations, use the Bionic Bus system, and connect with other disabled students, will also be a central resource. Here, disabled students will be able to find a space that has things that don’t even cross most people’s minds - snacks for low blood sugar, heating pads and ice packs for pain, and a space free of negative sensory stimulation. In my work to make this space a reality, I have put myself in places I never would have expected to go. I spoke with top university officials, gave a speech about the space in front of dozens of DEI personnel, drafted proposals, and contacted legislators for support. Through this experience, I have learned so much about advocacy and grown into the person I’ve always wanted to be: one who is knowledgeable, assertive, and able to make tangible change in their community. I am beyond excited to see how I can one day bring these newly developed skills into the broader world.