I was always an anxious student, one who struggled with academic self-confidence. In middle school, when I was at my most vulnerable, I had two very different experiences with two very different teachers. However, it was “Señora Thompson” who made me want to become a teacher. When I was young, and a teacher gave a math lesson, I would cry. Math was always a source of stress to me. “Mr. Wilson,” my 8th grade math teacher, noticed this immediately. I was the highly anxious student hiding in the back of the classroom. Realizing I was struggling, he invited me to extra sessions with him during free blocks. Whenever I would cry, frustrated and overwhelmed, he’d wait patiently with me and help me calm down. Slowly, he showed me that I actually do understand math, I just needed more time, more practice. At my 8th grade graduation, he presented me with my diploma and called me the “Little Engine that Could.” I loved “Mr. Wilson.” “Señora Thompson,” on the other hand, didn’t like me from the start. While I was a chatty and social girl, as many middle schoolers are, I was an excellent student, honest, and hard-working. “Señora Thompson” would yell at me for talking and accuse me of cheating when I did well on assignments. This came to a head when, one day, I was called down to “Señora Thompson”’s office. Heart racing, I shuffled nervously down the hallway. She began to berate me, calling me a liar, a cheat, and a brat. Crying, I fled her office and called my mom. In the meeting that followed, “Señora Thompson” again accused me of cheating, and also of lying about the statements she had made in my meeting alone with her. As I cried in disbelief, my mom told the school that she wouldn’t allow her child to continue on in a classroom with a teacher that was unsupportive, belittling and cruel. She pulled me out of Spanish, and “Señora Thompson” called me a “quitter” for it. This felt deeply unfair. I had excelled at Spanish and enjoyed learning it. I was a good student. How had I become villainized in this situation? Interestingly, what stuck with me the longest was not the pride and confidence that “Mr. Wilson” instilled in me and the vision of myself as the “Little Engine that Could.” Instead, it was “Señora Thompson”’s label of me as a “quitter” and a failure that resonated. It took me years to unravel the damage “Thompson” had done to my confidence and self-worth. Over time, I have found my way back to the Little Engine that “Mr. Wilson” saw in me. I am going to graduate Summa Cum Laude from the Honors College at my University. While the 8th grade version of myself hated “Señora Thompson,” the graduating adult version of myself is, in an odd way, grateful for the experience. It set me down a path led by compassion, patience and empathy. Why do I want to become a teacher? Teachers, like Marie Humphries and “Mr. Wilson”, are custodians for the future. They foster well-educated students and confident, considerate global citizens. They challenge and support students, creating safe, nurturing environments. While teachers like Humphries and “Wilson” sparked my general interest in education, it was “Thompson,” through her lasting cruelty, that cemented my determination and passion for compassion. I will be the teacher who looks for the anxious student hiding in the back, who connects with the chatty and social kids to foster their learning and who shows all kids that they are each Little Engines.

As a small child, my mother always encouraged me to be “the change that I wanted to see in the world.” For most of my young life her words, while inspiring, were unclear. What change did I most want to see? How would I go about achieving such a goal? Which community would my change serve? I identify as a disabled student. Despite official documentation from my university, my accommodations haven’t always been readily attained or granted. With every new course I take comes a new challenge: will my accommodations be followed, or even acknowledged? This lack of certainty has been a source of alienation and frustration for me. Yet, I’m lucky, knowing that my disability does not affect every aspect of my daily life, and is in fact largely unseen. During my four years in undergrad, I have found myself drawn to courses that explore themes of inclusivity and access, and which highlight alternative, non-mainstream voices. Through my work in the University of Pittsburgh’s Writing Center, I have seen firsthand how restrictive academic writing can be, consistently relying on third person narrative, adhering to rules of White Mainstream English (WME), and maintaining rigid grammar rules. These norms perpetuate a series of unequal, inaccessible, and ableist writing standards which many of the students I tutor struggle with. They flounder in the face of antiquated literary expectations, feeling pressure to erase their unique voices in order to fit the conventional mold of acceptability. Seeing these students struggle with their writing and with finding their authentic voice has led me to reflect on my own disability. If I, someone whose disability doesn’t impact me on a daily basis, feel so easily discarded and dismissed in academic circles, I can only imagine the experiences of those whose marginality or disability are everpresent. With graduation fast approaching, I know that I want to continue on with my education and pursue a Master’s degree. I want to become a professor whose courses utilize multimodal sources and open-ended essay formats. I want my courses to have appropriately defined writing expectations, bearing in mind each student's individual needs and constraints. I want to expand access and inclusivity in academic circles, ensuring that disability is regarded as part of the academic norm. And finally, I want to teach courses that celebrate all voices and abilities, inspiring self-confidence and acceptance in future generations of students. You ask what success will look like? For me, true success would be to show students the reality of disability: that it is often social structures which truly constrain individuals, not just their personal limitations. This argument, the center of disability justice scholarship, has been historically ignored, relegated as not universally applicable. I, however, maintain disability justice’s centrality: that all people can benefit from expanded and more inclusive access. For, if all learning styles were studied and appreciated, wouldn't the classroom feel more inclusive of all voices? I want to create such a learning environment, one which pursues disability justice, changing the classroom attitude to regard inclusivity as a benefit to everyone. I now understand what change I’d like to see in the world and how I can play a role in that change. This begins with first pursuing my Master’s degree, then continuing on towards my goal of teaching at the collegiate level, working to be a part of the change towards disability justice and academic inclusivity.

One summer, when I was 7 years old, my mom told me I’d be able to shower after a day on the lake. I swam all afternoon, but, by the time I was ready to shower, was told our plans had changed. We needed to go home and had to cut our trip short. I’d have to shower in the morning. While I couldn’t fully articulate how I was feeling, I remember the panic, the spiraling rabbit hole my mind led me down. For me, routine was everything. It was the structure by which I thrived, moving me through the day in a series of pre-planned steps. Any deviation was overwhelming. When I was 9, I started going to therapy. I remember raking sand in a mini Zen garden, answering questions from a woman in a beige cardigan about “how I felt when….” She had me play with dollhouses, acting out ideal and hard scenarios. After all the sand raking and the doll playing, she sat across from me and told me how life is a wave. It seems small when off in the distance, a mere blip in the ocean. Yet, when closer, it appears huge and looming, and you can either ride it out or get knocked down. As a child, I usually experienced the latter. My therapist helped me create a metaphor for my anxiety. Likening it to a wave, she was giving me the tools to swim. Having been knocked down by anxiety’s waves for most of my life, this concept initially felt impossible. She told me to close my eyes, take deep, grounding breaths, and calm my storming, windswept mind. I practiced these tools, buying a mental surfboard and invisible goggles to use the oceanic metaphor to the best of my abilities. They helped a bit, but my anxiety persisted. I continued to struggle. My mom learned of a new technique she thought might help: giving my anxiety a physical form, something easier for a child to visualize and talk about. Enter Leonard. He’s 6 '5, with glasses that constantly slip down his nose and ears that resemble an elephant’s. He shuffles along with an awkward gait, fashioning silent haikus in his head. He loves Kind bars, though he hates walnuts. He lives on my shoulder and paces back and forth. He is my anxiety. Once we had “met” Leonard, it was easier to talk about my anxious moments. When I was worried about a test, for instance, my mom and I would say “sounds like Leonard is pacing again, worrying about biology. Maybe he should take a nap now.” Leonard helped me to understand my anxiety, giving me terms in which to define the larger-than-life worries I felt on a daily basis. Sending him on vacation, I was able to distance myself from my anxiety, a symbolic gesture which showed me who I was without its constant presence in my life. When I got to college, I began to suffer panic attacks. I felt pressure to be an adult, to write with the maturity I perceived my peers as having. My first semester my grades suffered, an unanticipated blow to my confidence. I began to dread class, feeling jittery and sweaty once I sat down. When the professor began to lecture, all I heard was the blood roaring in my ears. My anxious thoughts began to consume me, and the panic attacks that often followed left me weak. I tried taking anti-anxiety medication, however, finding them unhelpful, I returned to the various coping skills that I’d learned in childhood. I continued to ride the ocean wave when I could and to talk to Leonard when I was able to. I learned the value of meditation and the calm it brings me. I found time for daily exercise and took mental health days when I knew I needed them. I made lists and planned out my assignments. I managed my sleep and made sure to schedule downtime. And through this, I found my footing. While I already knew I thrive with routine and a plan, I’ve now learned that I can also handle deviations and get through disruptions. I will be graduating this spring with a 4.0 and the highest of honors. My next step is graduate school. I want to pursue a career in higher education, to attain first a Master’s degree and then on to a doctorate. I want to teach and to focus on work in disability studies, expanding access for disabled students in academia. And, while I know that anxiety will accompany me along the way, my journey has been one of growth, adaptability, and tenacity. My anxiety will continue to evolve, and I’ll need to evolve without it. However, the greatest lesson I’ve learned is that I can.