Why are 38 percent of Stanford students saying they're disabled?

The accommodation process shouldn't be easier. I had to provide documentation to an employer per ADA rules.

For real mental disabilities, extra time is actually necessary because a person's brain isn't able to work at the same rate as a healthy person under that situation.

I'm bipolar and have personal experience with this. My brain can lock up on me and I'll need five minutes or so to get it back. Depressive episodes can also affect my memory retrieval. Things come to me slower than they usually do.

I also can't keep track of time the way a healthy person does. I don't actually know how much time each problem takes, and sometimes I don't know how much time is left because can't remember when the test started. I can't read analog clocks; it takes me 10~20 seconds to read them. (1)

Extra time isn't giving me any advantage, it just gives me a chance.

1: I'm not exaggerating here. I've have dyslexia when it comes to numbers.

Here's what I need to do to figure out how much time is left:

- Dig through my brain to find what time it's started. This could remember something was being heard, something I saw, or recalling everything I know about the class.

- Hold onto that number and hope I don't flip the hour and minutes.

- Find a clock anywhere in the classroom and try to remember if it's accurate or not. While I'm doing this I also have to continuously tell the start time to myself.

- Find out the position of the hour hand.

- Tell myself the start time.

- Look at the dial, figure out the hour and try to hold on to it.

- Tell myself the start time.

- Tell myself the hour number.

- Tell myself the start time.

- Find out the position of the minute hand.

- Tell myself the start time.

- Hour forgotten, restart from the hour hand.

- Hour remembered, start time forgotten, restart from the top.

- Both remembered.

- Look at the dial, figure out minute and try to hold to it.

- Hour and start time need to be remembered.

- Combined hour and minute from analog clock.

- Figure out what order I should subtract them in.

- Remember everything

- Two math operations.

Now that I have the time and I don't remember what I needed it for.

- Realize I'm taking a test and try to estimate how much more time I need to complete it.

I could probably use a stopwatch or countdown, but that causes extreme anxiety as I watch the numbers change.

I don't have this kind of problem at my job because I'm not taking arbitrarily-timed tests that determine my worth to society. They don't, but that's what my brain tells me no matter how many times I try to correct it.

> > we are concentrating all the wealth and power into the hands of a few.

> Correct, their slice of the pie is growing, the bottom 90%'s is shrinking

Not sure about "power" there. In my experience you get power by having a lot of free time and dedication to something else other people don't care about… which yes includes billionaires obviously, but most of the people meeting that description are just middle class retirees, so they're outnumbered.

> > This leaves the top 1% getting richer every year and the bottom 99% fighting over a smaller piece of the pie every year.

> Also correct, the biggest growth of share being in the top 1% segment.

It does not show it "every year", there are long periods of stagnation and some reversals. I would say it shows that recessions are bad and we should avoid having them.

nb another more innocuous explanation is: there's no reason to have a lot of wealth. To win at this game you need to hoard wealth, but most people are intentionally not even trying that. For instance, you could have a high income but spend it all on experiences or donate it all to charity.

I got ok grades in high school with 0 effort. When I got to college, that changed drastically, as I never learned how to actually study or learn on my own. I was on academic probation after my first year and had to figure out how to study, since I never had to do it before. I never could figure out how some of my roommates could study for hours at a time each week, I didn’t really know what they were doing. One class let us make a 1 page cheat sheet for the exam, that was pretty effective for me; once I made it, I didn’t need it. So the night before an exam I would do that, even if I couldn’t use it. That seemed to be enough to get me off of academic probation and graduate in 4 years with a semi decent GPA… but that was also after switching to the business college, which was much less effort than engineering. The worst were 2 self-instructional classes I had. I forgot about them both completely. I did one of them in the last 48 hours of the semester and took 6 exams in one day.

Fast-forward 20+ years and I find out I have ASD and ADHD. Knowing may have helped give me some better ideas for strategies, but part of me is glad I didn’t know, because I didn’t have an excuse and found a way through. Though I’m not sure any of the accommodations I hear about would have been helpful. I never needed more time during tests and having to take care of an animal just sounds like more on my plate. Had I actually spent time with tutors to study, I likely would have burned out. I needed a lot of downtime away from people.

I can totally believe that some kids who excelled in high school, enough to get into Stanford, would fall apart in college without the same structure and would need some assistance. But I do question what that will do for them when they need to go out and get a job. I know companies are supposed to provide accommodations if needed, but I have to believe that will impact their career. I haven’t told my manager or anyone since I found out about my own issues. It used to not be a problem at all, as my old manager let me work my way and he may have even known before I did, he was good at picking all kinds of things out like that. Currently I’m struggling for the past 4 years or so, but I’m not sure what to do about it.

For those with more mild issues, they should really be realistic about what the needs are.

I was diagnosed in my 40s with ASD and ADHD. It may have been helpful to know earlier (though I could debate both sides of that), but I didn’t need any special classes or helpers that would take resources from others. I’m wondering if some kids are saying they need this stuff to justify the condition or to play up the sympathy, to make the condition their personality.

> However that type of test is generally bad because it more measures speed then skill.

Isn't speed and fluency part of skill and mastery of the material?

> Just think about it - when was the last time you had a final exam where literally every person handed in the exam at the last moment. When i was in school, the vast majority of people handed in their exam before the time limit.

I think almost all of my high school exams and at least half of my college finals had >90% of students remaining in the exam hall when the proctor called time.