Out of spoons error

[white_hart]

This morning, I went to an "EDI Roundtable" event on the subject of neurodiversity and, allegedly, how we make the university a more neuroinclusive place.

The event was in a very new lecture theatre in one of the colleges. It was (a) incredibly steeply raked, so that the top of the theatre felt absolutely vertiginous; (b) weirdly lit, with fairly bright ceiling lights and windows at the top of the walls, meaning that the level where the speakers were was dimmer than the space above the top of the screen; and (c) horrendously echoey. The chairs were also really uncomfortable, there wasn't enough legroom even for a shortarse like me, and the foldout desk things were so close to the seats that mine was actually touching my stomach while I was sitting with my back against the backrest of the chair. And I am a very average size 16-18ish. Rarely have I been in a room that was that much of a sensory nightmare.

Of the four solo speakers, one (an academic colleague of mine) was neurodivergent. The others were: a Professor of Autism Research (not bad, apart from making me feel uncomfortably like a research subject and not a person); a GP (ok); a political philosopher who appeared to know nothing about neurodivergence and care less, opined that he didn't like the term "neurodivergent" because it implied a "neurotypical" and he thought everyone should just do as they would be done by and it would all be fine, and made a stupid joke about rejection sensitive dysphoria ("that's why I don't submit to peer reviewed journals any more") which made me want to throw things. All three neurotypical speakers came across very much as if they were addressing a default neurotypical audience, rather than a neurodiverse audience. And then there was a panel discussion with three neurodivergent people (two students and a student support worker), all of whom seemed incredibly ill at ease and at least two of whose microphones were not picking up their voices well.

I do think that the cause of improving neuroinclusion would have been better served by giving space to more neurodivergent voices. And the two-hour event used up all of today's spoons.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

Will there be an opportunity for you to give feedback?

[angelofthenorth]

Oh dear. Was there any feedback opportunities?

[joyeuce]

Definitely worth feeding back to them once you have enough spoons. I hope today is less stressful.

[serriadh]

Sympathy. I went to something aimed at (presumed NT) managers learning to support ND people and 90% of it was "ND people are all very different so there are no common things to consider or approaches to follow", which may well be true, but would have been much more helpful if delivered (even as quotes/examples) as ND people saying what did help them, with an acknowledgement that you cannot just Learn The Talking to ND People Handbook* and magically be brilliant at supporting actual people.

Otherwise we were left with 'get to know people and ask what will help them' which a) is either bloody obvious or you're the sort of manager where being told this won't help anyway and b) puts the work squarely back on the ND people to communicate their needs exactly.

(*the number of HE managers who thought this was a possibility suggests that we might not all have been as NT as all that either)

[nanila]

Yiiiiikes. I'm sorry. That does not sound well thought through.

[kaberett]

Good grief :-(