Edited by Kate Blackham, Monday, 5 Feb 2024, 14:25
There are multiple different groups within the OU that seek to provide professional development opportunities to other staff. Last year I put together a workshop on autism for the STEM AL group. There is also a group that help ALs use our web conferencing software. There's a group that runs sessions on supporting student mental health and they have just put out a call for presenters. That's what I've been mulling over for the past week.
I don't have enough for a talk - certainly not one that's useful to other people. All I have is my lived experience. That list in my bio, the laundry list, as I refer to it, aside from autism, I didn't have any of that at 15. That's the natural consequence of poorly handled adolescent mental ill health. That's why the NHS has CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services).
I now, post autism diagnosis, realise that I suffered from autistic burnout in the first term of my lower sixth. I was going to bed, exhausted, at 7pm, only to wake up, exhausted, at 7am every day. Along with studying A levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry I was studying GCSE Statistics, volunteering with my local Red Cross branch and training multiple times a week at my local karate dojo - I had the belt below a brown belt and can still give you a swift roundhouse kick to the head if I want - do not mess with me 😉 I had a part-time job I hated at a supermarket called Food Giant (the budget end of Somerfield). It was a bit like Kwik Save but we were charging for carrier bags before it was eco-friendly. Our customers were invariably angry at us checkout operators for our charging them 4p a bag and delighted in telling us that they were better than us. But the customer was always right.
In summary, my candle was being burnt at both ends and melted in the middle. I spent much of the year I was 17 feeling depressed (but fortunately only mildly so). I obviously had no idea I was suffering from an autistic burnout, but cut back on everything that wasn't essential and eventually got better.
When, like many autistic university students, I became mentally ill I had already learned the hard way that there was little point in bothering my GP and that 'friends' were prone to distance themselves from anyone perceived to be a Debbie Downer lest they catch the depression too. It doesn't help that one of the symptoms for depression is withdrawal from others and that autistics are less able to engage in what psychologists call 'help-seeking' behaviour. I was on my own and I was going to get better on my own just as I had at 17. Except of course I didn't. I got worse. Much, much worse. And there is a very real sense in which I'm still not recovered yet. I have agoraphobia because I have panic disorder. I have panic disorder because I have suffered from panic attacks since I was 22. I developed panic attacks due to the trauma of my university experience - an experience I very nearly didn't survive.
So what do I possibly have to offer my fellow ALs? What helped me?Â
Time, patience and a massively supportive network of family and friends.
Those aren't things that ALs can provide honestly.
I do my best. I don't tell my students my laundry list. I don't want to scare them off. But I allude to it. I'm completely honest that my first experience of university was so bad that it took me 20 years to come back and get the master's I had always intended to graduate with. I know that the students of mine that are struggling appreciate that. They know that I will have sympathy for them. They admit that they confide in me precisely because I am open about my past experience. But I don't know how to help them. I can't wave a magic wand and make their homelives happier, their housing less precarious, their friends and family more supportive. And I don't know what to tell other ALS to help their students. Because they almost invariably don't have an experience anywhere like mine. Very few people who have been left broken by higher education will come back and try again.
Mental Health Webinar (or not in my case)
There are multiple different groups within the OU that seek to provide professional development opportunities to other staff. Last year I put together a workshop on autism for the STEM AL group. There is also a group that help ALs use our web conferencing software. There's a group that runs sessions on supporting student mental health and they have just put out a call for presenters. That's what I've been mulling over for the past week.
I don't have enough for a talk - certainly not one that's useful to other people. All I have is my lived experience. That list in my bio, the laundry list, as I refer to it, aside from autism, I didn't have any of that at 15. That's the natural consequence of poorly handled adolescent mental ill health. That's why the NHS has CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services).
I now, post autism diagnosis, realise that I suffered from autistic burnout in the first term of my lower sixth. I was going to bed, exhausted, at 7pm, only to wake up, exhausted, at 7am every day. Along with studying A levels in Maths, Physics and Chemistry I was studying GCSE Statistics, volunteering with my local Red Cross branch and training multiple times a week at my local karate dojo - I had the belt below a brown belt and can still give you a swift roundhouse kick to the head if I want - do not mess with me 😉 I had a part-time job I hated at a supermarket called Food Giant (the budget end of Somerfield). It was a bit like Kwik Save but we were charging for carrier bags before it was eco-friendly. Our customers were invariably angry at us checkout operators for our charging them 4p a bag and delighted in telling us that they were better than us. But the customer was always right.
In summary, my candle was being burnt at both ends and melted in the middle. I spent much of the year I was 17 feeling depressed (but fortunately only mildly so). I obviously had no idea I was suffering from an autistic burnout, but cut back on everything that wasn't essential and eventually got better.
When, like many autistic university students, I became mentally ill I had already learned the hard way that there was little point in bothering my GP and that 'friends' were prone to distance themselves from anyone perceived to be a Debbie Downer lest they catch the depression too. It doesn't help that one of the symptoms for depression is withdrawal from others and that autistics are less able to engage in what psychologists call 'help-seeking' behaviour. I was on my own and I was going to get better on my own just as I had at 17. Except of course I didn't. I got worse. Much, much worse. And there is a very real sense in which I'm still not recovered yet. I have agoraphobia because I have panic disorder. I have panic disorder because I have suffered from panic attacks since I was 22. I developed panic attacks due to the trauma of my university experience - an experience I very nearly didn't survive.
So what do I possibly have to offer my fellow ALs? What helped me?Â
Time, patience and a massively supportive network of family and friends.
Those aren't things that ALs can provide honestly.
I do my best. I don't tell my students my laundry list. I don't want to scare them off. But I allude to it. I'm completely honest that my first experience of university was so bad that it took me 20 years to come back and get the master's I had always intended to graduate with. I know that the students of mine that are struggling appreciate that. They know that I will have sympathy for them. They admit that they confide in me precisely because I am open about my past experience. But I don't know how to help them. I can't wave a magic wand and make their homelives happier, their housing less precarious, their friends and family more supportive. And I don't know what to tell other ALS to help their students. Because they almost invariably don't have an experience anywhere like mine. Very few people who have been left broken by higher education will come back and try again.