Rebekah Tisdel is a sophomore sociology and neuroscience student at Texas A&M University who has dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD.
In this episode, Rebekah talks about what brought her to Texas A&M University and how disability played a role in her transition. She discusses how her perception of disability has changed drastically through the years and how guidance from Disability Resources has been important to her journey.
Transcript
Tanner Parker: What do you think and feel when you hear the word disability? For thousands of students at Texas A&M University, disability is a part of how they explore and engage with the Aggie experience. This is Agcess a collection of first person stories on what disability means to Aggies, just like you. We hope these conversations open your eyes and offer new perspective toward your understanding of disability.
Justin Romack: Howdy! This is Justin Romack. I’m a program coordinator with disability resources working in assistive technology, and I am joined today for the podcast with my co-host.
Tanner Parker: Hey, I’m Tanner Parker. I’m a senior right now at A&M, I’m a communication major and a English minor.
Justin Romack: Awesome. Tanner, I’m super glad that you are here today. And I’m really glad that we have our guest, Rebekah Tisdel, who is with us. She is a sophomore studying psychology and neuroscience here at Texas A&M. And Rebekah, I’m super glad to have you today.
Rebekah Tisdel: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Justin Romack: Thank you so much for making time, this podcast is really about creating space to tell stories and to learn about people and the dynamics that provide access and address barriers in the world for people. And so I’m really excited to hear your story and to create that space so that we can all learn together.
Rebekah Tisdel: Yeah, absolutely. Me too.
Justin Romack: I think the best place to start is what brought you here specifically?
Rebekah Tisdel: So I was homeschooled most of my life and had the opportunity to do a program called 4H. And so on one of the days, they allowed us to come tour Texas A&M, since I did want to be a vet way back when. And so I got to come tour at the campus and I fell in love with college station absolutely immediately, and was like, this is where I need to end up.
Justin Romack: What do you think drew you to your major of psychology and that minor of neuroscience?
Rebekah Tisdel: Definitely, honestly, my experience with having a learning disability and understanding that we all look the same on the outside and you can walk in a group of people and you have no idea what’s going through those people’s minds or what they’re experiencing or dealing. And that’s one thing that has just intrigued me so much of watching people.
Rebekah Tisdel: I’m a people watcher, so I like to see how people handle themselves in situations, and it’s very easy to tell if like a couple’s on their first date versus their fifth or seventh date based on the way they act. And I just love to see the way that people present themselves in public settings.
Justin Romack: So you’re going to be a professional people watcher essentially.
Rebekah Tisdel: Yes, exactly. Yes. You see me at Starbucks, you’re going to want to run.
Justin Romack: I love that. And I love that your identity as someone with a disability is so of woven into that.
Justin Romack: Talk to me a little bit about that piece of you, how do you describe disability and then to a little bit more personally, how do you describe your disability?
Rebekah Tisdel: My disability, I have dyslexia dysgraphia and ADD. So I just have like a little bit of a mix of everything. And originally when I was diagnosed, absolutely was thrilled out of my mind that made me so unique from everybody else. I mean, I would be outside telling my neighbors and all of everybody that I could just, Hey, you guys guess what I just found out, and tell them about it. And it wasn’t up until it really started to have an effect on my grades that I saw, wait a minute, there’s no positive to this, my grades are dropping, things are difficult. I can’t go outside and play with all the other kids, because I have to stay inside and continue to study and learn.
Rebekah Tisdel: And so my idea of disability change drastically going from it being a cool title that made me so different from people to being seen as a negative way that a lot of people do look at that word.
Rebekah Tisdel: And when they see that they see it as a set of limits of you can’t surpass this because you were defined by this.
Tanner Parker: What age were you when you first learned of your disability?
Rebekah Tisdel: It was actually when I moved from Vermont to Texas, I was seven or eight and that’s when my mom had to homeschool meet since we went in the middle of the school year and she noticed that we would go over like a set of words and how to spell it, and then 20 minutes later, I just could not remember anything about it. And so she went and had me tested and then I was diagnosed.
Justin Romack: Piecing that timeline together, around when did you start to kind of have some of these negative feelings about disability?
Rebekah Tisdel: It was actually when I was about 11 or 12, because that’s when I began to go to a co-op school. So once a week I would go out and be with other friends and students, and that was the first time that I was kind of how people say thrown in a real world situation, of seeing, okay, wait a minute, like there are people out there who school comes very easy for them and they only need to spend 30 minutes on something where not everybody has to spend hours like I do just to come up with memorizing just the simple equation for a math problem.
Justin Romack: Do you feel like going through middle school, going through high school, coming into college, do you feel like your mindset changed and what were events that might have changed that along the way?
Rebekah Tisdel: Yeah. So after I got into college, I went to a community college, which was absolutely great. I went to one before I moved up to college station and that when I noticed that I had accommodations that were available for me, so I was able to take advantage of like extra time and so forth, which boosted my confidence to know okay, they do have specific groups like this to help out people who think like I do, but then eventually like course my classmates would notice, okay, wait, why is Becca never hear on testing days? Like where is she at? I don’t understand. And so when they found out I would go in a testing center and receive 30 to an hour extra time, they would be like, wait, that’s not fair. And then start to kind of guilt trip me and make me see my disability once again as a negative way of, that’s not fair, she gets extra time.
Rebekah Tisdel: Like she gets all these extra benefits in reality like they only do so much. And so then that definitely changed my mindset going into college was when I moved to the next community college, I didn’t right away go to the accommodations at all because I was absolutely petrified of getting into the same rhythm again, of people being like, oh, that’s not fair, she gets to have extra extended time and so forth. And so I kind of hid my disability for a semester before I was like, this is really affecting my grades. My grades are more important than what people think.
Tanner Parker: I’m very surprised you got that kind of reaction in college. That doesn’t seem like something that college students would do. Did you have accommodations whenever you were in elementary, middle school or high school?
Rebekah Tisdel: I did not. Actually. I did not.
Rebekah Tisdel: I used a lot of home remedies, is what people would call it. So I would try using these colored sheets to put over pages, to read, to differentiate the words and everything like that. I mean, I tried having a special bookmark. Of course then I learned I had bad vision, so I had to get glasses and stuff, but I’ve tried so many different ways of bouncing on a ball, trying to study just things to help ease my mind, and none of them ever worked
Justin Romack: Before we get too much further. I want to circle back because I want to understand, you’ve mentioned some specific labels. You mentioned learning disabilities, you talk about ADHD. From a diagnostic standpoint, those are certainly things that are used to describe you. But I want to think of it more in terms of barriers, where are the barriers that you encounter when you’re in the classroom or you’re studying? Like, what are things that do sort of set up that barrier for you?
Rebekah Tisdel: The biggest barrier that I have is just understanding at the level of everybody else. I’m the type of person where you can sit here and read a poem and be like, it would come so easy to everybody else of understanding. Okay, like the moral of this poem was such and such, where for me, I’m going to think on a very different level and be like, oh no, like this was actually meant to be much deeper than what they thought. And so I would sit here and try to interpret that very differently in a way, and just be like, okay, this is very different than what everybody else is learning, which would affect because I would just understand it very differently. And then when it comes to taking quizzes and exams it took a student hearing it one or two times for them to remember where I’m like, wait a minute, these definitions are very similar and these are not at all how I thought I learned it.
Justin Romack: So now you’re at Blinn. You’re going through community college. Did you always know that you wanted to come from Blinn to Texas A&M? Like was that the next step for you logically?
Rebekah Tisdel: So before I went to Blinn, I had somebody try to convince me to not go to Texas A&M due to my grades. And I had a lot of people tell me, Texas A&M would not accept you because of your GPA. And so when I was at Blinn and I originally applied for Texas A&M I was denied and immediately I was overcome with just emotion of they were right.
Rebekah Tisdel: I so badly wanted to prove them wrong. And I so badly wanted to go in there and let them know like, Hey, you were wrong, I did it. And then for all of a sudden to be denied, I was like, they’re right. I’m not going to be good enough for this.
Rebekah Tisdel: But instead I told myself I have another semester, like I’m going to work as hard as I can and keep my head up and just continue to go after my goal.
Rebekah Tisdel: Like we only get one life, so why should I waste it going to a college I don’t want to go to? And if my dream is Texas A&M, I’m going to fight.
Rebekah Tisdel: So during that semester, I actually applied to Texas A&M Kingsville, and I got in for psychology there and was going to take it at the RELLIS campus, but then once again, I felt like I was settling for not my dream goal. I wanted college station, absolute Aggie, Texas A&M. And so took a semester off, did EMT instead, worked really hard and then I applied again and got in. So that was the biggest thing was you can’t just give up on your dreams. You always have to keep fighting for your end goal, no matter what.
Justin Romack: You were the catalyst of that change, right? Like you had the world sort of not rooting against you, but the world pushing back on you and you knew what you wanted and you got there. And I think that’s extremely powerful.
Justin Romack: I think that your journey is an interesting one too, because you talk about earlier sort of valuing and recognizing the uniqueness of who you are and how your brain was wired. And then you sort of got some pushback from the environment, the people around you, and that started away pretty heavy on you. You kind of went through an ebb and flow of that.
Justin Romack: How would you describe the idea of disability now? Now that all you know about you, about how you learn, about how you get the right access, how would you describe disability now?
Rebekah Tisdel: So I would describe it as a unique character trait that very few people do have. And for the people that do have that makes them stand out in a world where a lot of people want to keep things black and white. You have to do it this way. Whereas with people who have a disability, they have a different output on life due to the situations that they had to go through to get to where they are.
Rebekah Tisdel: They understand that not everything is going to come to them, and sometimes when you work really, really hard in life, you just don’t get to where you want to be. And you just have to end up being content with where you are and looking at the bright side of things. And so that’s definitely the way that disability has changed my mindset of learning. I’m not going to let this define me in a negative way, but rather instead, look at this and think this is who I am, because this is what sets me apart from my peers, because I don’t want to say in a way I have a sensitive heart, but I can be able to see someone who’s struggling and if I’m able to help them, because I understand it, then I will be more than happy to sit down with them and try to explain it to the way that I understood it to help them out, because I don’t want them to be where I was in that situation, alone, trying to figure all of it out.
Tanner Parker: It sounds like disability plays a pretty big role in your identity. Can you talk more about that?
Rebekah Tisdel: Yeah. So originally when I first moved here, I come from two parents who did not go to college. And so I was very scared to go to college because I felt like I was kind of put into this box of the stereotypes of well, your parents didn’t go to college, their parents, and so forth, you can’t be first generation at one of the best schools in the nation. That’s an amazing public school. And especially to even have a learning disability on top of that added another stereotype.
Rebekah Tisdel: And so I saw disability as a way that I was able to fight harder and work. And that’s when I changed my mindset on things and was proud because when I did surpass things that I was told you wouldn’t get through, there’s no way, I mean, just doing my EMT course, you have to have a B to pass.
Rebekah Tisdel: And I thought I’m not good at math and science, there’s no way I’m going to pass this course. And my group of five people that I would study with at the end on the very last day ended in me and one other person, because every other week somebody was being dropped from the program because it was that intense. And I just was waiting for my turn. And I remember studying for 16 hours a day, which sounds ridiculous, but I really gave up my life because I wanted to prove myself that I went above and beyond what many people would’ve thought a girl who had dyslexia was able to do.
Justin Romack: Well, and what I hear in that, number one, I hear a sense of pride in who you are. Is that fair?
Rebekah Tisdel: Oh, absolutely.
Justin Romack: Yeah. I hear a sense of pride that you’re wonderfully made. You have these unique aspects about you, that allow you to pour a different kind of value into the world around you. I hear somebody that recognizes they have to work differently. And we’ve talked about this, Rebekah, it’s not bad, it’s just different.
Justin Romack: What would you say is your response now, when you hear those stereotypes, how do you leverage those in your mind? How do you keep stereotypes from getting you down or sort of pulling your positive outlook on this back?
Rebekah Tisdel: So there’s definitely days where I will kind of be overcome by those stereotypes, especially when I will spend days writing an essay, and then I watch one of my friends write an essay overnight within two hours and get a 95 on it, where I got a 72. And there are days where I just think people aren’t going to understand, and I’m not going to walk around with this title over my head to say, it’s okay. It’s because I’m disabled. What other people see is, oh, she didn’t try hard enough. And I have been told so many times if you just study more, or if you just try hard enough, you will get better grades where that irritated me so much. And I kept trying to think, well, maybe they are right. Like maybe my 16 hours a day of studying is not good enough or days of trying to work on this project is not good enough.
Rebekah Tisdel: And then that’s when I just thought, you know what, like I’ve said before we get one life. So sit around and just let the negative things that people say about you define who you are when you are fully capable of putting yourself in anything and coming everything. If you want to continue to still have a life, don’t let school overpower you.
Rebekah Tisdel: I can sit here and if I am at the end of the day content with the amount of work that I put in an assignment, I’m going to enjoy the rest of the night. Whether it’s watching Netflix, go watch the sunset or go for a drive, like I’m going to still live my life no matter what, and just be content with. I know I tried my hardest. I know I did everything that I could, and just you have to have that gateway, that escape. And for me, it’s sunsets. And I don’t know why, but that’s just my go-to.
Justin Romack: I love it.
Tanner Parker: I’m kind of pulling Texas A&M back into this. I want to know how you got, I guess, introduced to disability resources. And I want to know how it’s played a role in your education barriers or accommodations here at A&M.
Rebekah Tisdel: Yeah. So as soon as I got accepted, I called Glen, asked him to just transfer my paperwork over and everything went through. And so then I got an email from one of the people from the disability department and was like, Hey, like let’s schedule advising appointment. I’d love to get to know you. I’d love to hear your story and get to know you a bit better. And I blew it off. I actually blew it off for about two weeks because I thought, no, like I got to where I want, I’m okay, I’m content. I don’t need accommodations. And then once again, within the first week of class, I was like, nevermind. And so I emailed her back and I was like, absolutely, I would love to set an appointment.
Rebekah Tisdel: So then I met with her and that’s when I learned that Texas A&M had a lot more to offer than I actually thought.
Rebekah Tisdel: Whereas I thought my only accommodation would be extended time, like it was at all my other schools, where there were so many more to the writing center, which is not even just open for just people with disabilities, but to so many other students as well, and all the tutoring and groups and all of that. And I just thought, wow, okay. I need to take advantage of the things that are being handed to you.
Rebekah Tisdel: It’s like trying to cook a meal and it’s like, no, I’m only going to give you one utensil where it’s like, no, I’m going to need some more ingredients and some other things to be able to do this. And so I definitely after talking with the people in the disability apartment, I was able to take advantage of the accommodations that I was given, which has tremendously helped with my schooling and academics.
Tanner Parker: It seems that so far in your college experience, you’ve had to have accommodations everywhere you’ve gone. And I want to know, how do you feel about having… Do you feel that as if you have to start over every time you get somewhere new and have to talk to someone about your disability? You mentioned at the first week of classes at A&M you kind of ignored the email and just was like, yeah, I’ll get to it. We’ll see what happens. And so do you think you put it off that one time because kind of feels like you’re starting over or do you embrace it every time that you do have to move to a new environment and you have to again, introduce it
Rebekah Tisdel: Honestly, it’s because at the previous schools I attended, I never had somebody who truly understand what it was like to be disabled. It was always okay, we’re going to give you the basic standard protocols of what your accommodations are going to be. This is what the paperwork you were able to provide, this is what you’re going to get. And it actually wasn’t until they introduced me to Justin, who I had a very long phone call with, because he truly understood where I was and my mindset of things and was like, you know what, like I understand for the first time. And that’s when I truly was like, this is amazing. Like, I almost have like an accountability partner, because I can go to him and know that he truly understands my struggles versus just calling a normal academic advisor in the disability department who is just like I’m sorry, you’re going through that. That stinks. Like that’s the end of it. Whereas when you have that group of people who truly do understand the setbacks and the things that you’re going through and experiencing, it makes a huge difference in who you are.
Justin Romack: Oh my gosh. I love hearing you say that. Not because you mentioned me but
Tanner Parker: A little bit.
Justin Romack: Yeah, I think that it is such a great reminder that Rebekah and you’ve heard me, so say this, but you checked all the boxes, you met the bar and exceeded it. Somebody, multiple somebodies, said that you belong here and tapping into the resources that are available to you that’s not a deficit.
Justin Romack: And again, we don’t do anything magical we are promoting equity. You deserve the experience that you’re entitled to. And we understand what equity looks like in the context of disability. And it’s not an advantage. It’s not an upper hand. We talk about this with extended time. Extended time you could certainly look at that and say, oh, well, Rebekah gets this amount of time, she’s going to get a better test grade. Well, the reality is extra time doesn’t give you the answers. Right? And so I think you recognize that these are things that they give you access to the experience so that you can get in the classroom and prove that you’re capable of belonging here.
Justin Romack: And so I love hearing that empowered, excited, energized attitude, because I think it’s that number one, it’s going to keep you here and number two is going to propel you into something very successful. And that’s kind of a good jumping off point because I really want to know how do you feel your disability and identity have informed your career aspirations?
Rebekah Tisdel: Well, originally I wanted to be a nurse. I was just super fascinated in the medical field. And I, like I said, was told by many people, you can’t do that. You’re dyslexic, you’re not going to learn how to spell the medication names or pronounce them, and that’s going to be a big mistake when someone says you need to grab this and you read the wrong medication and grab the wrong one, and so I saw the limitations and said, okay, you know what, you’re probably right. But then I thought, what is it that I am so intrigued and invested in and have such a different experience to everybody? And that was just the mind. It was all on how the mind works and everything.
Rebekah Tisdel: And like I said, I walk down the street, I sit in a classroom and my disability is not seen.
Rebekah Tisdel: Like, I look just like anybody other like everyone else. And, and so it’s until you have a conversation with me or you see how I text or something like that, where it’s just like, wait, that didn’t make any sense. Like she used the wrong, your, or just misspelled everything, that I was just like, I want to be able to know more about each individual and just know how people cope with things and how people handle situations and stuff. And so, because of my disability, it made me learn, like I said, we all look a certain way on the outside, but on the inside, we all think very, very differently and go through very different experiences.
Rebekah Tisdel: And I just want to kind of be that person for someone to say, you know what, it’s okay, I don’t understand what you’re going through, but let’s work it out. Let’s figure it out and go through it. And so honestly, I don’t know where I’ll be when I graduate in like the next two years or so, but I just know that wherever I end up, I’m not sitting here because of my hard work. I mean, I am, but I’m also sitting here because of my disability and because I have learned to work through it and work past it and not just let it identify me in a negative way like a lot of people do.
Justin Romack: Do you think you let it identify you in a positive way?
Rebekah Tisdel: I do and I don’t. Some days I do, some days I don’t. Some days it’s hard and it’s like my life would just be so much easier if I have had amazing grades. And there’s so many amazing scholarships for people who exceed above a 3.5 GPA where I just know that might not be the case for me. Like I’m going to work as hard as I can, but at the same time I’m content because I get new experiences and I get to meet new people that the people who have a 4.0 don’t get to meet.
Justin Romack: Oh my gosh. That’s cool.
Tanner Parker: That was a really good answer.
Justin Romack: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and it goes back to that point is yes, there are other pathways to live life, but is that really the pathway you want to live? And I sort of say that I just kind of throw that question out there, not for you to answer, but I think it’s an important one that we all have to think about, right?
Justin Romack: Comparison is honestly the thief of joy, and when we try to size ourself up against other people, we don’t know what forward and backward looks like to them. We only see kind of where they’re at right now. And so I love and applaud and appreciate the fact that you recognize that yes, your pathway is different. Yes, your circumstances are different, but you are going to choose to live today and enjoy today and do what you are unique wired to do. And so I think that’s well done on your part and good on you for that.
Rebekah Tisdel: Thank you. Thank you. And it too it’s a support group you have, it’s the people sitting there and like I told you I took an exam. I took midterms and I walked away just being like, this was terrible. Like, I don’t know my grade. I’m not going to know my grade for the next couple of weeks, but I just walked away in a terrible mood. And my boyfriend sat there and said you can go about this two ways. You can sit here and you can pout about this and let this ruin the rest of your day and the rest of your week and so forth until you get that grade. Or you can continue to live life and look at the little things and get the enjoyment that you do out of watching a sunset.
Rebekah Tisdel: And that one thing that definitely helps is having that support group, because you could just have someone send you text and say, oh, I’m sorry, that sucks. And then you’re going to still stay in that mindset or you’re going to have someone sit there and say, you need to get out of this and be totally real with you and help you move past something.
Justin Romack: Rebekah, you earned your moment here and it is evident that you have put in a lot of work, but you’ve also so had a lot of the right level of access and you’ve advocated for yourself and you’ve searched deep within who you are to define the person you want to be. And I’m just really honored that we had an opportunity to sit down with you and learn from you and grow from you and hope that the people listening found this really helpful, because I certainly know that I learned a lot from you.
Justin Romack: So thank you.
Tanner Parker: I appreciate it.
Rebekah Tisdel: Yes. Thank you guys so much for allowing me to be able to come and share my story. Now I don’t speak on behalf of all people who have disabilities. I don’t speak on behalf of all people who have dyslexia ADD and dysgraphia because everyone’s stories are very different, but I just hope people are able to walk away to know at least, wow, there’s somebody out there who understands struggling, and this is how they surpassed it and overcame it.