Abstract
This paper reflects on the experience of being a woman with Down Syndrome who completed an undergraduate degree at an Australian university. This autoethnography is based on a year-long research project completed as part of my studies. I did a literature review about the experiences of other students with an intellectual disability at university. Then, I wrote about my own university experience. I found that the parts of my own educational journey were linked to each other like stepping-stones. Four main things came from my research: the importance of the journey before going to university; the isolation experienced by students in this situation; how stereotypes might affect students; and teaching methods that can be used to support students during their time at university. This experience changed me as a person. I gained skills and confidence whilst being at university, as well as the ability to see where I am going in life. This experience made me feel more part of society. While there were many wonderful parts, it was not an easy journey. People with an intellectual disability have a right to have an education. What makes the biggest difference is the way we are treated by other people. It would be good for students with an intellectual disability to be accepted and treated with respect. People may have a different way of learning, and it would be good if this was recognised.
Highlights
This paper is an autoethnography of a woman with Down Syndrome who has recently completed an undergraduate course at Flinders University, South Australia
To make the project manageable, we reduced the scope of the literature review and selected the most relevant nine articles for me to read in full
Once I had words written down in each of my main stepping-stones, we looked together for things that came up more than once, and where my experiences connected to the big ideas that were in my literature review
Summary
This paper is an autoethnography of a woman with Down Syndrome who has recently completed an undergraduate course at Flinders University, South Australia. This paper is a reflection on my own experience of being a student at university. This paper was written from work I did in a year-long research project as part of my studies. Helped me by supervising this project and writing this paper with me. I did a literature review about the experiences of other students with intellectual disabilities at university. I wrote about my own university experience
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