Perspective from grad school: When you are blind and in grad school

Abstract

The hardest part about being a blind student in graduate school is the inaccessibility I face everywhere. I part crowds with a wave of my hand ... OK, maybe it’s my cane, but people scatter like mice that just saw a cat either way. Searching for the copy room or projector lounge can feel like a scavenger hunt as I walk through hallways marked only with room numbers in braille, like room 175. In class, “This arrow means the molecule pictured goes here,” my professor says. Without a tactile diagram, I can guess we might be talking about a molecule going into an enzyme active site, or maybe it’s a mechanism. The exam is tomorrow and I still haven’t gotten any of the braille documents I asked for, so it’s another test of learning everything I can about the few things that were clearly named in lecture. When taking the