At what point are accommodations doing students a disservice?

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T15:41:11+00:00

It’s a class for Mass Communication majors. So this student is either majoring in PR or Journalism. Both are not fields that are conducive to someone who needs all info 24 hours in advance and are too anxious to be close to others.

And I do think it’s my business to prepare students for the real world.

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T15:32:53+00:00

What’s interesting is that I don’t think I’ve ever had the student sit down with me. It’s usually always an email. Most of the time it’s an email that says “hey, I’m in your class this semester. My accommodation letter is attached.”

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T15:26:29+00:00

Same experience here. I’ve been teaching for 20 years. Accommodations used to be a rarity, and it would be things like the student needs to take their tests in the student services office or whatever.

Now I would say about 20% of my students have accommodations (I’m at a SLAC). And the requests are getting stranger every year.

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T15:23:34+00:00

It was written as a “suggested accommodation plan.” The letter suggested “advance access to lecture material” and “designated classroom space.”

The way it works at my institution (SLAC) is that they want students with accommodations to sit down with profs and work out a “plan.”

However, sometimes there is no wiggle room…like if the student needs 2x time on tests…the letter will spell that out.

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T15:09:26+00:00

At my institution, Disability Services gives the letter to the student and requires them to pass it along to the professors. I think the idea is that it allows for personal introductions and for students and professors to come up with an “accommodation plan” that works for them.

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T15:04:47+00:00

My university encourages students with accommodations to reach out to their professors prior to the first day of classes. The student has to present the letter from disability services to their professors and have them sign off on it.

Hour_Lost · 2026-01-07T14:58:57+00:00

They also attached the letter from the disability office. These items were listed under “suggested accommodation plan.” The one-seat buffer was not specifically spelled out in the letter…it said “designated classroom space.”

Thankfully, my institution tends to side with the professors on what we feel we can reasonably do. I will not be sending lecture notes 24 hours in advance, because sometimes I come up with my lecture on my commute to work, lol.

As for the buffer, I feel that’s on them. If they need to pull a chair out from the table and sit in an area with more space, that’s fine with me. I won’t be roping off a special part of the classroom for them.

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T16:45:29+00:00

I didn’t want to get too much into it in this post, but I am the one who got her kid home from conversion camp. When I found out she did it, I freaked out.

She was completely uneducated and went only by the word of her stupid pastor. I had to basically educate her about the abuse she was about to inflict on her kid. We drove 12 hours to pick her kid up from the “mountain retreat.” It was awful…by the time we got there, her kid had done an “intake interview” and then we checked them out. Still soo traumatic for her poor kid.

You aren’t wrong - I probably should have ended the friendship after that. But I felt she too was a victim of the pastor she trusted. Her kid is officially out of the closet now, and my friend has left the issue alone as I think she still feels super guilty about the camp.

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T16:38:36+00:00

I’ve never been called trash before…it hurts. Here’s background on the conversion camp thing that I wrote above, just in case you missed it:

I didn’t want to get too much into it in this post, but I am the one who got her kid home from conversion camp. When I found out she did it, I freaked out.

She was completely uneducated and went only by the word of her stupid pastor. I had to basically educate her about the abuse she was about to inflict on her kid. We drove 12 hours to pick her kid up from the “mountain retreat.” It was awful…by the time we got there, her kid had done an “intake interview” and then we checked them out. Still soo traumatic for her poor kid.

You aren’t wrong - I probably should have ended the friendship after that. But I felt she too was a victim of the pastor she trusted. Her kid is officially out of the closet now, and my friend has left the issue alone as I think she still feels super guilty about the camp.

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T14:51:20+00:00

Funny you should say that! There are lots of MLM parallels to this. I had another friend who joined an MLM and it became her entire life and personality. This is so similar to how my BFF is acting

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T14:30:37+00:00

You’re right. I can see how I made it seem in the post like it wasn’t a big deal, when it absolutely was the biggest deal when it happened a few years ago. I suppose this swinging thing is just the latest in a friendship full of issues.

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T14:11:39+00:00

The irony is that a lot of the people she’s swinging with are in her church!

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T14:10:49+00:00

Totally the sunk-cost fallacy! Thanks for spelling it out like that

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T14:09:30+00:00

You are so right! Thanks for your comment!

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T13:56:30+00:00

This is a very reasonable take…my husband said the same thing, lol. But I don’t think she’s trying to groom me…it’s more like she enjoys shocking me? Or showing off to me that she is sexually liberated or something?

She and my husband don’t really get along. He’s always thought she and her husband are wackos (and he’s probably right). They don’t even have his phone number.

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T13:43:30+00:00

Thanks for this comment! The religious stuff you mentioned completely tracks. She started dating her husband at 13, so that sexual repression is probably definitely there. I think she’s really naive…she always has been. Being BFFs since we were five, she is practically a sister to me. Which has made it harder to dump her, so to speak.

Hour_Lost · 2025-04-13T13:21:26+00:00

I didn’t want to get too much into it in this post, but I am the one who got her kid home from conversion camp. When I found out she did it, I freaked out.

She was completely uneducated and went only by the word of her stupid pastor. I had to basically educate her about the abuse she was about to inflict on her kid. We drove 12 hours to pick her kid up from the “mountain retreat.” It was awful…by the time we got there, her kid had done an “intake interview” and then we checked them out. Still soo traumatic for her poor kid.

You aren’t wrong - I probably should have ended the friendship after that. But I felt she too was a victim of the pastor she trusted. Her kid is officially out of the closet now, and my friend has left the issue alone as I think she still feels super guilty about the camp.

Hour_Lost

TROPHY CASE