Being an autistic grad student comes with a lot of challenges. Many of those stem from the different experiences I have compared to my neurotypical peers. Some of the challenges can be addressed through avenues like the school’s accessibility office, getting support from academic advisors and professors. Others might be better suited to a professional mentorship program learning from experienced people who have walked the road before. But sometimes what one needs is to talk things over with a student in the same class. It’s often useful to me to be able to discuss things with my peers to better understand things. Having a peer support group for this purpose seems like a good idea to me, so I’m going to try to build one.
I already have several support networks in my life. I have my birth family and chosen family, my neurodiverse friend group and my queer friend group, my volunteer community. All of these play important roles in my life, giving me a safe space to return to and rest, as well as a secure base from which to explore. Each fills a need that I have, for safety and community and knowledge sharing and so many things. But one area that I don’t have that kind of support right now is in my academic studies.
To resolve that, I’m setting out to create the community that I need. My goals for such a support network include:
- Build comradery around shared struggles
- Share resources related to program goals and individual courses
- Get assistance with assignments while maintaining academic honesty
- Create professional networking connections
- Get insights about job conditions from those working within libraries
- Have a place to vent and share memes
- Have study sessions for mutual focus
- Get and give support for neurodivergent and queer students
If it becomes necessary at some point to create a collective bargaining group to advocate for changes within the MLIS program, this would be a good place to organize that. To this end, such a support network needs to be based outside of the school’s influence. In my case, I’m going to set up a server on Discord. Discord supports listing the server as available within a “Student Hub” so that others from the same .edu domain can find it without an invite link.
My initial plan is to invite students that I do group projects with to join it. Assuming that goes well, I’ll additionally include an invite link in my introduction post for each class when the semester starts. I like the idea of starting with students that I’ve collaborated with, but eventually I would like this to grow into a commonly used resource with students at all stages of the program, from undergrads with aspirations to graduates who are working in the field.
I see this peer support group as filling a gap that exists within my program in particular and academia at large. Universities provide some support to students about which classes they need to complete in order to graduate, and professors provide some support to students by answering some questions about assignments and providing graded feedback. But for accessibility advice, resource awareness, and social support, students are largely left on their own. I may not be able to solve that for all of academia, but I can try to at least provide and receive that kind of support within my own program. When paired with a real mentorship program, I think students would emerge not just as better librarians, but as better people. We’ll see how it goes.
If you’re interested in joining this support group or starting one of your own, feel free to get in touch!