When I signed up for a class about “Disability Rhetoric” I was apprehensive. I was interested in learning more about disability, but I had never encountered rhetoric. I remember searching the definition of rhetoric every day for the first two weeks of class. Once I moved past my fear of rhetoric it was time to tackle the concept of disability. Our first assignment with “The Kids Are Alright” immediately challenged my perceptions of disability, forcing me to confront the overcoming and sympathy (read: pity) narratives that had been taught to me. One of the earliest quotes from my journal is in response to an article by Simi Linton. “But we have failed as a society by expecting abnormality and inability of people who are disabled.” While I still believe this is true in some respects, I don’t think I gave enough credit to the disability community. In today’s world, disability is far more visible than it was even as I was growing up, in large part due to the activism around making the world more accessible and sharing the narratives of people with disabilities. I think this also calls into question definitions of normal and ability, ones that I hadn’t considered at the time of writing that line.

Surrounding the conversation of Disability Visibility as a whole: “It is the way of understanding more about the world and how empathy is the answer when you have more knowledge about the vastness of diversity and the vastness of disability.” I had never encountered the narratives of people in Disability Visibility, and I had never encountered the drastic actions that we saw present in disability activism stories like in Crip Camp. The narratives we encountered were not all sunshine and roses. I don’t like reading sad stories, but there is a difference between a sad story and a provoking narrative that I encountered in this course. Stories like “Unspeakable Conversations” and The Kids Are Alright aren’t necessarily triumphant stories, but they aren’t sad stories either. They are stories that show multi-faceted people experiencing life. And it was refreshing to get a narrative that went beyond my expectations unapologetically. These authors weren’t writing to pander to the nondisabled community, they were writing for themselves.

I hadn’t really encountered a lot of theory outside of educational theory, and seeing disability theories and applying them to literature and media has helped me develop a greater sense of critical analysis. Being able to develop these skills and knowledge has been instrumental in shaping the path of my future. I have learned new perspectives from my peers and been revived in my hope for teaching. I think this quote from October summarizes my thoughts of the class pretty well. “It is where people begin to learn and break free of prior discourses and develop new concepts in conjunction with other like minded people.” I could not be more grateful for the knowledge, theory, and connections I have learned in this class. It also showed me that I can bust out writing much more confidently than I had expected. I am proud of where I have come and I look forward to how I can use this experience in my future.