College Knowledge by Learning Ally College Success Program Team

College Knowledge Podcast - Episode 4: Advocacy Being a college student with a visual impairment can be challenging but connecting to the College Success Program can help you make the most of this experience and succeed in reaching your goals. Join our mentors and cohosts, Bryan Duarte, Rachel Grider and Rashad Jones as they explore the academic, the professional, and the personal aspects of College Knowledge. If you are a college student who is blind or who has low vision, or you are curious about the world of college and visual impairment, this show is for you! Episode 4: Advocacy Many people know that if you are blind or have low vision, you need to advocate in the classroom and around campus. But advocacy is part of our daily lives, and you never know when you'll get the opportunity to use or sharpen this skill. Join Rachel, Rashad and Bryan as they dive into advocacy for all kinds of situations. You can also find this episode, and previous episodes, on iTunes by searching College Knowledge or by clicking here. Be sure to leave us a rating or review! Learn more about the College Success Program and sign up at learningally.org/CollegeSuccess.   Episode 4: Advocacy Transcript Rachel Grider: Welcome to “College Knowledge,” Learning Ally’s podcast for college students who are blind or visually impaired. This show brings together the three core elements of Learning Ally‘s college success programs: mentors, resources and community. I am your co-host Rachel Grider, blind (?) mentor, music teacher, performer and lifelong advocate. And speaking of advocacy, that’s exactly what we’re going to be talking about today.  Last year, based on the feedback for mentors, the college success program added a course to the curriculum called, “Living on your own.” I was really excited to write some resources for this course. For instance, I wrote a resource about shopping on your own, but I also wanted to write a resource about advocacy. I wanted to show that when it comes to advocacy, we’ve all been there. We’ve all most likely gotten it wrong a few times. Well, we’re all human, and we also want to make advocacy easier for people. I also wanted to show that advocacy happens all the time. You usually don’t get a break from it. It can happen in your classes, in job interviews, with friends and family, in restaurants and in recreational activities. So unfortunately, or fortunately, you always need to be prepared.  Here to join me in our advocacy chat are my co-hosts Rashad Jones and Bryan Duarte. To get us started, Bryan is going to discuss advocacy in a professional and educational setting, as well as appropriate and effective strategies for both situations.  Bryan Duarte: Thank you, Rachel, for that great introduction. And yes, advocacy is something that is very, very important to me, and I’m a big advocate of self-advocacy. I believe that in a lot of situations there are right ways and wrong ways to advocate, and you’re not always just advocating for yourself. In a lot of ways, especially in the social aspect of things, you are really under a microscope. So the way that you interact with people in a professional or educational setting really could have repercussions on other individuals who are blind or low vision. If you have a good interaction, it could reflect good on the next person they interact with, so it’s very important that when you are advocating to not just stomp your feet and storm out or start banging things.  So let’s look at this from a scenario kind of perspective. When I was an undergraduate, I had a really rough time. I think I’ve talked about this before where I had a rough time. My first semester was almost my last semester because of the time that I had, and I expected things to be in place and things really were not in place to the standard that I thought they should have been. And I had a couple meetings and things did not go well, and I had a decision to make then. I was meetin

College Knowledge Podcast - Episode 3: Relationships Being a college student with a visual impairment can be challenging but connecting to the College Success Program can help you make the most of this experience and succeed in reaching your goals. Join our mentors and cohosts, Bryan Duarte, Rachel Grider and Rashad Jones as they explore the academic, the professional, and the personal aspects of College Knowledge. If you are a college student who is blind or who has low vision, or you are curious about the world of college and visual impairment, this show is for you! Episode 3: Relationships In the episode, our hosts interview Caitlin Mongillo, blind mentor and social worker, and discuss everything about relationships: the professional, the platonic, and the personal. Learn some important guidelines about networking, making friends and connecting with potential romantic partners. You can also find this episode, and previous episodes, on iTunes by searching College Knowledge or by clicking here. Be sure to leave us a rating or review! Learn more about the College Success Program and sign up at learningally.org/CollegeSuccess.   Episode 3: Relationships Transcript   Rashad Jones: Hello everybody, welcome to College Knowledge, Learning Ally’s podcast for college students who are blind or visually impaired. This podcast brings together sort of the three elements of Learning Ally, and that’s mentors, resources, and community. I’m your co-host, Rashad Jones. Blind mentor, independent living coach, and lifelong learner. Starting or maintaining relationships can seem easy for everyone else, but when you’re blind or visually impaired, you know, what do you do when you can’t recognize someone’s face? How do you greet a professional you don’t know? And how do you deal with dating and desire? Today we’ll be discussing these topics and many more, all related to developing and maintaining and navigating those professional, personal, and intimate relationships. I’ll be talking with my co-host, Bryan Duarte. How are you doing, Bryan? Bryan Duarte: Very well, thank you. Rashad Jones: Great. And we are so delighted to have the guest speaker for today, who is Caitlin Mongillo. Now, she’s a blind mentor in our program. She’s also a social worker who works with some of the most vulnerable people in our population, helping them to maintain their independence and really helping them find employment and just really be confident about who they are, really excelling in their lives. So, Caitlin, thank you so much for joining us. How are you this evening? Caitlin Mongillo: I’m great, thanks for having me. Rashad Jones: No problem, no problem, no problem. Bryan Duarte: Awesome. Thank you Caitlin, thank you Rashad for that awesome introduction. As Rashad talked today, mentioned in the introduction, we will be discussing three major topics of relationships, and the first one is professional, personal, and romantic or intimate relationships. The first one we’re going to start with today is going to be professional relationships and really what does this look like, and how do we navigate that, when some of the things that society does or social society says that we should do, to get along. So, without further ado, let’s jump into it. So, the first thing we’re going to kind of discuss is, what is it like when we introduce ourselves to someone, and they want to throw out a handshake? Where do we kind of start with that? I’m blind, maybe I don’t see them putting their hand out, is there any ways that we can give some tips on how to do this, or when to do it, or when not to do this? Caitlin Mongillo: So I always sort of, I’m totally blind, I have light perception only so I can’t see, you know, if someone’s reaching out their hand to shake, and I know when I started my job, my current position about 6.5 years ago, this was really challenging for me because a lot of times in, you know, college and graduate school and th

College Knowledge Podcast - Episode 2: Mentorship: How Not to Reinvent the Wheel Being a college student with a visual impairment can be challenging but connecting to the College Success Program can help you make the most of this experience and succeed in reaching your goals. Join our mentors and cohosts, Bryan Duarte, Rachel Grider and Rashad Jones as they explore the academic, the professional, and the personal aspects of College Knowledge. If you are a college student who is blind or who has low vision, or you are curious about the world of college and visual impairment, this show is for you! Episode 2: Mentorship: How Not to Reinvent the Wheel In this episode, our hosts interview Abigail Shaw, Learning Ally's College Success Program Mentorship Coordinator. Learn about why she considers her role to be that of a platonic matchmaker and hear from College Success Program mentors and students about what mentorship through the program means to them. You can also find it on iTunes by searching College Knowledge or click here. Be sure to leave us a rating or review! Learn more about the College Success Program and sign up at learningally.org/CollegeSuccess.   Episode 2: Mentorship: How Not to Reinvent the Wheel Transcript Bryan Duarte: Welcome to College Knowledge, Learning Ally’s podcast for college students who are blind or low vision. This show brings together three core elements of Learning Ally’s College Success program – Mentoring, Resources and Community. I am your cohost Bryan Duarte, blind mentor, software engineer and universal designer. When you think about a mentor, what comes to mind? Is it someone who helped you through a tough time? Or maybe it was someone that helped you find the career path you were going to pursue. Maybe this person helped you become a better blind person or maybe just a better human in general. A mentor can be all these things and much more. Our Learning Ally CSP mentors have all undergone several interviews as well as a background check. We work with our students to set goals and we even celebrate with them when they achieve those goals. But, we are also individuals. Just like our students, we all come from different backgrounds, experiences with our vision and areas of interest. The person who coordinates this process is Abigail Shaw, part paper chaser, part interviewer, and to use her words, part platonic matchmaker. To interview her today is my cohost Rachel Grider. Rachel Grider: Thanks, Bryan. Abigail thinks of blindness as one of many parts of her identity. She attributes her positive attitude about her disability to her mother, who worked as a sign language interpreter, but also developed extensive knowledge about visual impairment along the way. Abigail studied music and audio engineering and is now pursuing her masters degree in social work. She moved from her home state of North Carolina to Brooklyn, New York. She is also a runner who has competed in marathons in New York City with Achilles International. She is also, incidentally, the audio engineer for this podcast. Welcome to the podcast as a speaker, Abigail. Abigail Shaw: Thanks, Rachel. It’s fun to be the person in front of the microphone. Rachel Grider: All right. So, how did you become interested in College Success? Abigail Shaw: I actually started working for the College Success program in the fall of 2015 as a mentor. Another staff person at the time had reached out to me and let me know that they were looking for mentors and shortly after being a mentor for about a semester, the position of mentor coordinator opened and the rest is history. Rachel Grider: That’s great. So, onto something that I’m sure everyone is curious about – matchmaking. Why do you call yourself a platonic matchmaker? And how does the process work for you and for a student? Abigail Shaw: So I kind of just think of it as a match. I’ve never witnessed or met someone who does matchmaking professionally. But the ways in which it’s conv

Learning Ally's College Success Program podcast - College Knowledge - has officially launched! Being a college student with a visual impairment can be challenging but connecting to the College Success Program can help you make the most of this experience and succeed in reaching your goals. Join our mentors and cohosts, Bryan Duarte, Rachel Grider and Rashad Jones as they explore the academic, the professional, and the personal aspects of College Knowledge. If you are a college student who is blind or who has low vision, or you are curious about the world of college and visual impairment, this show is for you! Episode 1: Welcome to the College Success Program! In this inaugural episode of College Knowledge, our hosts interview two members of Learning Ally's College Success Program staff. Learn more about the program's history and origins, as well as about the program's hopes for the future. Click here for Episode 1: Welcome to the College Success Program! Podcast Link Learn more about the College Success Program and sign up at learningally.org/CollegeSuccess.   Episode 1: Welcome to the College Success Program! Transcript Rachel Grider: Welcome to College Knowledge. Learning Ally's podcast for college students who are blind or visually impaired. We will being with episode 1 - A very brief history of college success at Learning Ally. In this episode we will introduce you to some of the program staff and explain briefly what the program is about. Here to help unearth this history is my co-host, Rashad Jones.  Rashad Jones: Thanks Rachel. But before we get to that, I think we should probably tell our listeners why we’re here in the first place. So, what got you interested in the program? Rachel Grider: Well Rashad, I have been blind all my life. I have always had a passion for music and I earned Bachelor’s degrees in vocal performance and composition and Master’s degree in voice performance and music theory pedagogy. After I graduated in 2013, I moved back to California to teach. I am currently teaching voice at an Arts Academy and choir at a local high school, as well as performing freelance. I began working as a CSP mentor in 2017  and I have really enjoyed it. I have learned a great deal from my colleagues and students and I really value the many discussions I have had with them. This program is such a great resource and I wish that it had been available to me when I was in school. So, how about you Rashad? Rashad Jones: Well thanks Rachel. I’m Rashad Jones and I’m excited to be one of the hosts in College Knowledge, I really am. I have retinopathy of prematurity so that’s what caused my visual impairment. So it’s something I have dealt with all my life. I work at a local center, independent living, here in my hometown called Access to Independence. There, I help students of all ages focus on goals and developing their futures. I’ve worked for Learning Ally since 2016, and my students and I teach one another on a regular basis. You know, I was struggling in college, a music education major - so we’ve got some similarities there. But I was trying to figure it all out, often times on my own. So I really know what it's like to feel like you’re the only blind college student around anywhere. I know what it's like to know that you have potential but not really know how to unlock that potential. I’m excited to share some tips and tricks that will hopefully make your journey a little bit better and more fulfilling.  Rachel Grider: Well, enough about us. Let's hear from our guests. Do you have our first guest Rashad? Rashad Jones: Yeah, I sure do. Our first guest is Kristen Witucki, our curriculum and content editor who has been part of Learning Ally since 1993, part of its staff since off and on since 2005 and part of the program since 2014. Blind since birth, Kristen wears many hats in her life. In the CSP, College Success Program, she’s in charge of hunting down engaging content for you, the students.