Personal Matters: To Disclose Or Not?
At a session I was leading about how to write personal statements when applying for graduate school and scholarships, a student asked whether it was all right to mention information of a somewhat….problematic nature: A semester of F’s. Various legal matters. Dropping out of college.
“Here’s an example,” I said. “It’s not exactly the same but…………”
I said, my son has autism. I described the stops and starts of my “career path,” of leaving a job to take care of Charlie, then aged three years old; of taking various jobs based on whether I could schedule my teaching hours around the time he was in school. I said, when I wrote my job letters I did say I have an autistic son………… to explain the gaps and twists, the stops and starts. The students listened quietly.
“You can just mention it in one sentence, and then move on,” I said. Then added, “You just want to be sure whatever information you include in your statement is relevant to your main point, to your thesis.”
In my case, it is not merely relevant; it is essential.
4 opinions for Personal Matters: To Disclose Or Not?
Rochelle
Mar 21, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Thanks for sharing this, Kristine. I sometimes worry that sharing such information might keep me from being hired–that employers worry that I might require more time off for doctor appointments and such.
Thanks for sharing…
Nicole
Mar 21, 2007 at 6:33 pm
This is an issue I’ve been struggling with as I apply to and interview for grad schools in clinical psychology. If I disclose I risk having an ignorant person decide I’m not capable simply because of my diagnosis (despite successful past experiences in the ASD field). If I don’t disclose I risk faculty seeing some odd behaviors and thinking I’m too nervous or have some severe mental health problem and obviously not wanting me in the program.
Lisa/Jedi
Mar 21, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Our friend & kid-sitter (& Brendan-mentor) decided to be quite straightforward about his AS diagnosis on his college applications last year. He discovered later that one of the reasons his first-choice school accepted him was his honesty & positive attitude towards his differences. He recently found out that he made the dean’s list for his first semester at this school, in spite of a rocky transition to a school that’s 2000 miles from home. I think the school made a very good choice in students… :)
Kristina Chew, PhD
Mar 21, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Finding out that Charlie has autism and raising him have run a parallel course with my jobs in academia—-he was a baby when I got my position at the University of St. Thomas and I realize that was the last time I wrote a job letter without mentioning autism! When I requested a year of leave and then resigned (although I felt certain this would be the outcome when I went on leave), Charlie being autistic and my needing to take care of him were the reasons given. I mentioned Charlie and autism (always in one sentence, in the course of describing previous positions)—-I thought about not doing so, but knew that this would come up in regard to the hours I could teach and the occasional necessity of “dropping everything” to go pick him up.
That said, this is definitely a topic for which there’s no set answer for—-graduate school seems to me to involve so many variables; What sort of program is one applying for? Is there some specific way that autism and/or disability is part of your academic work?
I really do keep meeting more and more college students with AS and (maybe I’m overly optimistic) think colleges and universities are more and more aware that AS and ASD students need services different from those more traditionally created for students with learning disabilities. More than a few times my mention of Charlie and autism has led to a student speaking to me outside of class, about a sibling or relative, about themselves.
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