Since I was oppressed by the education system
César Giménez, adult student
Years later, when I was fit to resume my university studies, I went as far as I could: I even completed my doctoral thesis. I had to give up my initial plan, which was to transcribe and translate a small homiletic discourse, probably from the 14th century. However, because after the stroke I had lost the sight in one eye and the work required very fine vision, I decided to set that aside and dedicate myself to studying some other subject. There is no shortage of subjects to discover in classical culture.
When I was not yet oppressed by the educational system, I had normally completed my degree in Classical Philology. Then came the Certificate of Pedagogical Aptitude, pre-doctoral courses, and the occasional paid job as a professor. But things changed because the system is not inclusive and due to the lack of accessibility in the built environment.
I would like to continue my studies, and now I realize that I wouldn’t be able to write a long text without the necessary human support. The fact is that, firstly, I had a stroke that kept me out of circulation for a rather long time and left some after-effects, like this vision issue. Furthermore, the university where I studied, or intended to, probably unintentionally and due to a lack of knowledge, did not have the characteristics for a student in a wheelchair (the most visible, but not the only limiting factor) to complete their doctoral thesis in the faculty to which they belonged.
Broadly speaking, my tutor’s office was on the second floor of the relevant building, which meant I had to notify them in some alternative way (a cry for help or a message to another faculty member) for them to come down each time I went to consult something with them. In reality, that wasn’t too difficult to overcome, and we managed for a while. I forgot to mention that to get to the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters without personal assistance, I had to rely on the goodwill of my father, who always offered (I believe with pleasure and pride) to take me to university.
Going back to the previous point, we were unable to find a satisfactory solution to the fact that the Latin library could be moved to the ground floor (as it was also located on the second floor), so I could not consult manuals and other documentation of my specialty in situ. To this deficiency, another one must be added: we also did not find a way for me to climb the stairs necessary to reach the newspaper library of my faculty (which did not have, I don’t know if it has it now) an elevator.
With all kindness, the librarians I spoke with offered to bring down the material I needed at any time, which seemed quite unfair to them. To all this, we must add that I could not know which document I would need without consulting it beforehand. Finally, it goes without saying that it was not at all plausible to have these people at my service going up and down stairs for five years or however long and as many times as I required to do the research for my work. I did not want these women to be left, as they say, “in the guides”: their husbands could pursue me by land, sea, and air.
I could summarize it all by saying that it was a matter of lack of accessibility to the physical environment of my faculty. Adding to all of the above that, although I had been able to write a short thesis of less than fifty pages (as the support for writing papers disappeared from the disabled student support service), I did not see myself in a position to face the writing of a doctoral thesis of about two hundred and fifty or three hundred pages, or however many were needed.
Finally, if I managed to overcome all these tests (which was quite improbable), I had to defend my doctoral thesis orally before a tribunal (as I believe the procedures work). I don’t know if I would have had any support from the disabled student support service for the oral defense of a thesis, because it’s obvious that I can’t do it alone, even though I knew and had a pretty good relationship with most of the members of my hypothetical jury. However, I never got to consider this aspect. I stopped at the point where I realized I wouldn’t be able to go up to the archive of my faculty. I also tested the lack of accessibility of the Psychology and Law libraries, and I was not disappointed: the accessibility to these places was deficient.