Welcome to College!

For a person like me, college was miles away from high school when it came to  the level of difficulty and the amount of freedom afforded. I was unfocused and unprepared for that radical shift. Now add in the disability factor and my experience was made even more difficult.

Starting college at Texas A&I University (later Texas A&M University-Kingsville) in the late 1980s before the implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act was a journey I’ll never forget. The technology around today was only dreamed of back then. As a visually impaired student, I had to listen to absorb information instead of seeing it. That was difficult for someone who had only lost his vision only three years prior.

Entering college at the time I did, I got to experience a variety of ways that the visually impaired received assistance. But it still was primitive compared to what is offered these days .

For the majority of the time I spent earning my bachelor’s degree, the only method used to help me was through the hiring of students to read to me.

Choosing the proper reader was important because they had to be good readers, available and willing to help me. Over the various semesters, I used many readers, who met me at the college library, in a dorm room or apartments. Some of their names still come to me. There was Beverly Beasley, Julie, Nancy Flores, Martha and Jessica Hibbitts. Those and others helped get me through some of those tough times.

Then by the mid-to-late 1990s the Services for Students with Disabilities office was created at the college. That office was responsible for providing services for students with special needs. This newly created office assisted me by providing letters to professors to inform them of my disability. This office also provided readers who often read books to me by recording the material and providing me the tapes. Other times, the material was scanned by way of a special program. The scanned material was then read onto a tape via a computer-generated voice.

That office was my first experience really dealing with individuals who helped me at the college. In 1997 Rachel Cox became Services for Students with Disabilities associate coordinator. . She was passionate about helping students with disabilities. She was a warm, friendly person who truly cared and listened to me when I spoke to her about my needs. With her assistance I was the first student via the disabilities office to get a course substitution.

Rachel now works as director of disability services at Texas A&M-University- Corpus Christi. We are still friends to this day.

The disabilities office also hired student workers who played an important role in my college life. One student who stands out is Elsa (Montante) Galindo. I met her in the mid-1990s and we quickly became friends. Many times when I dropped by the disabilities office Elsa would help me by scanning books and at other times reading books on tape for me. I recall certain times when she would take a novel or textbook home and read and record the material from home on her own time.

Elsa is now a literacy specialist for a school district in San Antonio, Texas, and we are still friends today.

Technology’s advancements have come in leaps and bounds since I attended college. But I am grateful for what was available and for those who helped me when I needed it. People like Rachel and Elsa came along in my life for a reason. I treasured them then as I do now. 

- Roel -

Comments

[Elsa Galindo]

Aww my pleasure amigo! You truly helped me too