MY FIGHT WITH TIME IN THE STRUGGLE TO LEARN WITH A DISABILITY AS A STUDENT AND AS A PROFESSOR IN GEOLOGY

Throughout my life, as a student and now as a professor in geology, I have had to find ways to explain my learning disability to others. Responses have varied. As a student, I had enough negative experiences, especially in middle school and high school, to instill a certain sense of dread of the need to disclose; even in college and graduate school, I would wonder: what reaction am I going to get this time? Since earning my PhD, the conversations have had a different tenor. Replies often vary on a theme of “I wouldn’t have known;” or “You don’t sound like you have a learning disability.” Though well-intended, such comments give me little way to acknowledge struggle in the past, present, and likely future. Thus, my well-rehearsed response usually goes, “You’d have to see me work.” By which I mean, “you’d have to see me in my fight with time.” Indeed, the need to find language, and sometimes fortitude, for public disclosure is in some ways easier than a much less visible challenge I encounter because of my learning disability. How do I find words to understand challenges and barriers I can perceive within myself but cannot see or touch?

The qualitative methodology of autoethnography involves examining cultural experiences and beliefs through construction of personal “insider” narratives and then contextualizing those narratives with existing literature. Autoethnographies are opportunities to challenge norms. In a culture often smitten with efficiency and a vernacular laden with language that equates speed with intelligence (e.g., “you’re such a quick learner”), my learning disability imposes a different tempo. I must value effectiveness before efficiency. Efficiency may come for me in some things and has in the past. But it cannot be the goal. My brain does not allow it. While I have long understood this reality, the lived experience has not been easy to embrace. I need different language. Recently, I found a new source of inspiration in an unexpected place: the language within geologic time. In this presentation, I seek to challenge the norm of my long-standing fight with time by using my background in geology to pursue a kind of truce.