College life with SMA taught me self-advocacy's importance
Gabrielle Runyon, who has SMA type 2, obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville and is now pursuing her master’s at Tennessee State University. She shares about the need to practice self-advocacy when at school.
In recognition of Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month in August, the Faces of SMA campaign features a multimedia series with written essays and video interviews highlighting the real-life experiences of people affected by SMA in their own words. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more stories like this, using the hashtag #FacesofSMA, and check here for more.
Transcript
As a disabled college student, it really has been a struggle and taught me how to advocate for myself as well as put myself out there because I am very shy. Most people don’t know that, but I am very shy. But once I warm up to people I really will not shut up.
So it was just about like putting myself out there and advocating for myself knowing that nobody else was fighting for me but me and my family, and my family wasn’t there all the time. It was just me on campus in classes and talking with the teachers.
So I had a couple teachers that didn’t wanna respect my accommodation so I had to — I remember one specific professor I had he did not want to give me extra time on my test so I went to his like department I went over his head to his department and he finally fixed it he got kind of flustered and was like “Oh, I can do that now.”
But just realizing that you have to advocate for yourself because who’s going to do it if you don’t do it?
