This email is about 900 words; you can listen to the six-minute human-read audio edition here.

The first time someone asked me what I was going to grad school for, I was in second grade. My parents have two grad degrees apiece, so I knew what they meant, and I assume the adult asking a second grader also had a graduate degree. As it happened, part of my dad’s job in those days was interviewing law school applicants, so family dinner frequently included stories about people whose reason for attending grad school was "seems like a good idea". After staring down the adult who asked me, I rolled my eyes, said "I'm SEVEN," and vowed that I would not go to grad school unless I had a really good reason, because clearly grad school turned adults into dolts.

I think I have a good reason now, but I also know that for many people I’ve talked to, grad school marks a Before and After period in their lives. I don’t know if it will for me, but just in case, consider this the “Before” image in my eventual “Before and After” diptych.

Before I enter special education academia, I want to remember I already know a lot. I have lived 41 years with my own experience with disability, first- and second-hand, as my primary teacher. (I am, after all, a year and a half into writing a dang book about it.) I’ve also learned about disability from informal community and, rarely, from books. 

As near as I can tell, I’m about to spend the next year asking “How do we know (fill-in-the-blank)?” and then searching academic databases. I’m a big fan of the scientific method and structured inquiry, but it's an awful lot of steps from those things to useful advice. I want to remember it’s okay to continue to keep knowledge acquired non-academically at the top of my personal hierarchy of what is valuable, even though I'll be in a place where footnote-able sources are going to be at the top of the knowledge hierarchy. 

Before I enter the college of education and become entirely fed up with the word "pedagogy", I want to remember: I have always loved teaching. I take classes and workshops half to learn the explicit course material, half to watch how the instructors teach. Formal education is not my happy place as a learner, but it is what we’ve got for bulk orderly knowledge transmission, and it is a place where other kinds of learners can thrive. I am not the target market for many of the kinds of instruction I'm going to receive or for some of the kinds of instruction I'm going to be taught to offer.

Before I learn formal frameworks for teaching folks who are blind and low vision (BLV), I want to commit to reminding myself: linguistically, I will sometimes refer to my future students/clients as “them”. But really it is always an “us”. I am doing this because I want to help people who, like me, have non-default sensor packages. Specifically, I want to help people acquire skills that will enable them to move more freely and safely around their physical worlds. I want to do this because moving around more freely and safely has made me a happier, more gracious, more connected, more fun member of my community.

Before I lose my never-made-a-slide-deck status, I will remember that there is value in using communication methods that are comfortable for the people I’m trying to communicate with. I think signaling professionalism via attire is bullshit, but it is an established and familiar signaling system, and I did eventually learn to particpate in it. Same is gonna go for slide decks. Sometimes you just gotta use what exists, however flawed. Also I may have higher IQ than all my classmates (hope not, but likely based on sample size and where I am on the bell curve). I need to remember that they have their own kinds of smarts, PLUS they have made slide decks before. I do not have to go Tufte on them. I can be selective about where I air my feelings about academic signaling systems.

Before I become a low-vision person in a space designated for building skills for teaching folks with considerably less functional vision than I have, I will remember: my experience is valid. And also, by legal definition, the people I am being trained to serve are not like me, because neurological vision processing differences that are currently only measurable by self-report are not eligible for BLV services. Figuring out whether it’s a good idea to change the law that excludes me is part of what I’m doing this for. The other part is figuring out how to help people like me, laws that seem stupid from where I am now be damned.

Finally, because I need it in writing: I have permission to quit with the degree unfinished, or with the COMS certification not obtained. Deciding to keep going can be a quarter-by-quarter process, rather than a default merely because I started. However, I don’t have permission to quit without first asking for help with whatever the obstacle is, even if I don’t know would be helpful. My “ASK” forearm tattoo) has been useful in the Before, and I’m glad to be carrying it into the during and the After.