Inclusive College Education

As a student at Appalachian State and being in the Scholars with Diverse Abilities Program (SDAP), my best experience is making friends and being able to live together and being more independent. I find it easy to live with them. We all get along and we communicate very well with each other. Being in this program has helped me to make new friends and has helped me with being responsible. For example, I learned how to manage money this year by tracking what I spent and what I earned. It has helped me to figure out when to eat, especially with getting together with my friends to go out. SDAP has helped me to be more social, not just by making friends in the dorm but by making friends outside of the dorm as well. With SDAP, it has made living with my suitemates and roommates a lot easier. It has also helped to be confident and more outgoing.

I can say that there is a difference in living at home versus living with my friends or on campus. I feel more independent and can take care of myself and make my own plans without needing any help. I think living with my friends is a lot more fun, especially over the weekends. We like to get together and figure out what we could do over the weekend, or sometimes we just stay in the dorm and watch movies or sit around on our phones or just have interesting conversations. Sometimes we walk around campus at night or stop by Insomnia, which is a cookie and ice cream place near campus. What I like most about being with my friends is that we all have a lot of things in common. I think that makes it a little bit easier to live together. The other thing that makes it easier is that we get along very well with each other; if there is an issue, then we all talk about it to get it figured out. Or if someone is needing help, it could be with an assignment or just help with taking out their trash, we all pitch in to help sometimes or just one person helps. And if any of us needs help with schoolwork, there is at least one person willing to help while the rest of us can give our opinions if needed. My friends also help me to stay on track and not get distracted.

I really enjoy living in the dorm, but living in the dorm means that I have to live with other people. Sometimes with that there are things that I don’t like, since my roommate and suitemates have long hair and with that comes hair being all over the floor and sometimes in the shower and in my room. When I walk around with my socks on, the hair gets caught in my socks, and sometimes there will be hair somewhere on me that isn’t mine. I like living with my friends, but I also have pet peeves. We all do, and we sometimes talk about how much hair is on the floor and how we can prevent the hair from getting everywhere. Or we talk about whose turn it is to clean certain places in the bathroom or whose turn it is to buy toilet tissue. We try to communicate that as much as possible; that way it doesn’t turn into an argument or a problem. I also enjoy living in the new dorms. Compared to last year living in Summit, the dorms in Thunder Hill are a lot nicer. But there have been a few problems that have happened with the dorms like mice, mold, and Covid.

Sometimes I do wish the construction would stop all together as well; that way we don’t have to deal with the construction workers still working on some parts of our new dorms. They didn’t really make sure everything was up to code. They built this building within a matter of a few months, which can also be a bit tricky because sometimes either the construction workers or it could be just the wiring that triggers the fire alarm more than usual. And we’ve had a few problems with the elevators not working most of the time. They are still working on some of the cracks that are in the wall because, like I said before, they built this building within a matter of a few months. You will start to see huge cracks in the wall that they have to fix, or if paint is chipping off the wall, they also have to fix it. I just wish they would have taken their time with building the dorms instead of rushing everything.

I enjoy living on campus because the one thing I like about it is my job that I have. I’m working at the Student Recreation Center, which is on the other side of campus kind of where my dorm is. I like working there because the people are very kind and hardworking, and they are willing to help if I have any questions about anything involving my job. I ask questions about sanitizing because that’s part of my job. I sanitize the weight equipment and the machines. The other part of my job is that I make sure everyone is following the safety guidelines with the gym and with Covid. The only part I don’t really like about my job is that I have to stand there from 6:00 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. on Mondays and on Tuesdays 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., which isn’t that bad, but watching people to make sure they are following the rules or if they need a certain type of equipment, such as resistance bands or the muscle rollers or a weightlifting belt, can be kind of difficult at some point. We are limited to certain types of equipment, so it makes it a bit harder when someone walks up to the desk and asks for something that’s not there anymore. I also had two campus jobs, but I was forced to quit the other job, which was working at the dining hall on campus, because there were a high number of Covid cases. I had to quit, or they were forced to let me go. I didn’t do anything bad; they didn’t want to risk losing their staff because they are short on staff, and they didn’t want them getting sick from the college students working there. They let most of the college students go, but at least I applied for two jobs because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a job right now. I really have enjoyed my college experience, and I will definitely miss being around college students and just college in general.