Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

Elizabeth Hamblet: Seven Steps to College Success

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In today’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Hamblet, a leading expert in college disability services, about what families often don’t realize when it comes to accommodations in college. We unpack how support systems shift after high school, which accommodations students can and can’t expect, and how to help your student build the self-advocacy and independence they’ll need to thrive. Whether your student has a 504 plan, an IEP, or simply needs extra support, this episode is full of practical guidance and honest insight you won’t want to miss.


Bio

Elizabeth C. Hamblet has worked as a learning disabilities specialist in college disability services offices for more than two decades. In addition to working at a university, she is a nationally-requested speaker on preparing students with disabilities for successful college transition. Hamblet is the author of Seven Steps to College Success: A Pathway for Students with Disabilities  (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) and a concise guide on transition, and her work has appeared in numerous journals and online platforms. She offers advice and information on her website at www.LDadvisory.com and shares resources on numerous social media platforms. 

Follow Elizabeth for more expert advice and resources on supporting students with disabilities in the college transition process:
Instagram – @ld_advisory
Facebook – Elizabeth C. Hamblet, LD Advisory
LinkedIn – Elizabeth C. Hamblet
Threads – @ld_advisory
Bluesky – @echamblet.bsky.social


Access free resources and learn more about Sheila and her team at Signet Education at signeteducation.com or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheilaakbar/.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

We are there to remove barriers for students that are created by our environment, but it is not our mandate to make sure, for instance, that they keep a high enough GPA to stay enrolled. Or if they are in a fraternity sorority and it requires them to have a certain GPA to participate, that's not what accommodations are intended to help with

Sheila Akbar:

Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. It's June. Oh my goodness, summer is around the corner. School is almost out. Have we lost our minds yet? I don't know. Let's find out. Today's guest is a new friend, but a friend that I feel like I've known for so long. We know a lot of the same people. We shared a lot of the same values, and of course, that's why I'm bringing her work to you today. My guest name is Elizabeth hamblet, she is an author and a speaker, and she has been working in the space of student support for students with learning disabilities, ADHD, dyslexia, other disabilities, and you'll hear this in the episode. She was really concerned about the lack of information for high schoolers and their parents planning ahead for college, and what kind of supports that student might need. How can they bridge the gap, if the college is not going to provide all of the same kind of supports and accommodations that a student had in high school, and how do we navigate this whole process? So she wrote a really amazing and comprehensive book called The Seven Steps to college success, a pathway for students with disabilities that I mean I look at all the time, and I recommend to people all the time, so excited to invite her on the podcast to talk about her story and her work, and what you need to know if this is relevant to one of your students or one of your children. So take a listen. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining me today.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Sheila Akbar:

Great. Great. Well, let's start how I always like to start, which is, tell us what you do, and then how you got there? How did you end up doing this?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Oh, how much time do you have? Sheila, and I like to share the story in that I think it's a very windy path to what I do now. And I think so many young people still think that they need to go to a certain college so that they can major in a particular thing that will get them the job that they will have until they retire. And I just the majority of folks I know, you know, are couple of jobs in at this point in their lives, and so I think it's really important to normalize that for students. So I speaking of jobs, I completed a bachelor's in English Literature thinking I wanted to be a professor, and my advisor senior year said there are so few jobs you really need to think about this. And so I got a master's in teaching high school English, and the year I finished grad school, they were laying off teachers where I lived, so I got a very part time job, and, you know, did some other things, and ended up kind of, you know, not staying at that job after the first year, and doing some other things. And then it's a long story how I fell into going back to grad school for special ed and so a couple of false starts with different pathways, and decided that that was what I was going to do. And so I also had a part time job after that, and one of the things I picked up to supplement my income was a job at the place where I had done my graduate work as a college learning disability specialist, and it was when I was there that I found out, oh my gosh, I just finished a program here. And now I'm realizing they never talk to us about how different the environment is for students with disabilities, that the prevailing laws or parts of laws change, and the expectations are different, and some accommodations are not available. And that was sort of my, you know, I realized I hadn't been able to prepare my own high school students for that because I didn't know. And then I moved out of state, somewhere else, and took a job where all I was doing in that position for a few years was reviewing the documentation that students submitted their requests for accommodation. So just to you know, foreground this, when students with disabilities are interested in having accommodations at college that is not part of their application at all, they do not have to tell the college. That they will be seeking accommodations, and if they choose not to, they there's nothing about that that means they can't later ask, because that is a common misunderstanding I want to I want to dispel so once a student and you and I are recording this right after decision day, right students have chosen their college they're going to enroll, and for many of them, this might be a time that they are able to now register with the Disability Services Office, which they will do by filling out a form, because that's what college is all about, right? You want something, you fill out a form. It's good preparation for adult life, in my opinion. And they're going to answer a bunch of questions, and we can talk about what those will look like, and also submit what's called documentation of their disability, and so which is just paperwork that shows us how they came to be identified as having a disability. So in that position, I was seeing students asking for things that I knew we didn't provide, and I kept worrying about what it felt like for students to come to college and only then learn that, for instance, we didn't often provide extended time to finish papers and projects. You know, that we didn't do study guides that we prepared for those students. And so I started making presentations about this at my local school districts, and then wrote the first edition of my book. Because to me, how can we plan appropriately if the folks doing the planning have no idea what the next environment looks like? And it became really important to me to do that. So now I'm on my third job in 20 something years, and I am back to working directly with students which I love, and I teach them study strategies and reading strategies, time management and organization, which also helps me kind of see what students are struggling with. And also I continue to do that documentation review.

Sheila Akbar:

Well, thank you for that recap. I have so many questions. I love hearing that, like many of us, you tried a bunch of things, like you had something in mind, somebody presented you some information, and you were like, Oh, gosh. Now what you know, there were circumstantial things happening, right? They were laying off teachers where you lived. So what you thought was going to be kind of a sure bet to give you job prospects turned out at that moment, was not such a sure bet. And you, you know, you had to make things work. So you tried a bunch of things, and one of the things you happened to try ended up being what now, I'm sure you would call your purpose the thing that really drives you, the thing you're so passionate about.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

I think about that so often, it's like it was a windy trip to get here. And, you know, my 20s were tough. I was not happy to be struggling, you know, to find my way, but I eventually made it here. And yeah, I do, I love what I do.

Sheila Akbar:

I love that so much, and I think it's a really common story. Of course, we don't all end up working in Student Disability Services, but everybody kind of has their version of this thing, where people have heard me talk about this before, but I was just tutoring on the side while I was finishing my dissertation, and then it turned out that, like the tutoring work, the work I was doing with high schoolers and their families just hit me in a different way in which I was like, Wait, this is the thing that I'm actually meant to do, and it led to a totally different career trajectory than I could have ever imagined, certainly, than my parents could have ever imagined for me, right? So I think it's so important, as you said, to normalize that that is absolutely normal. And sometimes when I hear people talk about the expectation that they have that I have to go to the right college, and I've got air quotes up here, you guys can't see me, but the right college and choose the right major so I can get the right job, and then whatever happens after that, I think a lot of students don't think that they're going to be in the same job for the rest of their lives. Because, you know, even the generation before us wasn't a 50 year career at a single company, right? That that's changed a lot.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Right. And you retire, you get your gold watch and your, you know, retirement like a pension, remember those?

Sheila Akbar:

Right. But I do think particularly my generation growing up in the 80s and 90s, we were really often told if you don't do well on this test, you're not going to get a good grade, and then you're going to get, you know, held back, or you're going to be put on this lower track. And it's this whole domino effect that everything you do right now is going to determine everything for the rest of your life, and that these things are so tightly interlocked that there won't be flexibility or an opportunity to get quote, back on track, or, you know, move in this other direction, which was something that I know my parents were saying to me, maybe half because they thought that's how the world worked, but really half because they just wanted me to do what they wanted me to do. Right? They were trying to scare me. Into, you know, getting the best grades and never letting anything slip. And and I think a lot of people in my generation like have really absorbed that message, even if our life experience has not matched it right. And then, and then we just parrot that to our kids, and then that ends up being the sort of dominant narrative. I'm curious what you think about that.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Well, I mean, I think that there's that in you know, that that can be the prevailing narrative, as you say, in a lot of communities. So now, like taking it over to my particular bailiwick, when we talk about students with disabilities, and it's funny, because when I have these conversations, I often find myself actually saying to people what I am speaking to you as a group of parents or professionals working with students with disabilities, but so much of what we talk about is also about, you know, everybody, the general population, and so kind of turning that on its head. I think students develop and mature at different rates, and sometimes in the community of families of students with disabilities, they recognize that, and they say, Okay, this kid may need longer before they start the college journey, or they may need to start part time and or we may need to set up these outside supports, because we think they're kind of going to do okay, but we know that they'll they'll need this. And I don't think enough parents of what we in my field called neuro typical students think about that and think about their students readiness. I think there are a lot of, I don't know about a lot of, I should say, but there are a number of students every year that get kind of dragged along through a college admission process and through these tests that we talk about. And I think that, you know, I interviewed somebody from my second book who had significant learning disabilities in ADHD, and she had a really rough and windy path, and folks can read some information from her on my blog, but she said, you know, nothing magical is going to happen. Just because your kid got into college, that doesn't automatically mean that they're ready. And if you just send them off with this magical thinking that these this kid who's not managing themselves is suddenly going to do it just by virtue of being at college, you're setting everybody up for disappointment. Yeah, you're in for surprise. Yeah. So, and I think what's interesting is I'm not allowed to talk about where I work, but the place where I work has a College of General Studies. So not only do we have traditional aged undergrads, but we have folks who have come to us from a variety of life paths. So we have students who, for a lot of different reasons, started at a community college and then transfer to us, and then we have students who were in the military and came out. Those tend to be students, in my experience, this is all anecdotal. With ADHD, they love the military because somebody tells them what to do every minute of the day. The structure is great. Then they get to college and they're like, Well, look at all this time I have, what do I do with it? I have adults who, you know, for a lot of reasons, just didn't go to college at the time their their classmates did. So it's just an illustration of how many paths there are, and it's it's hard. I mean, in a lot of communities, there's a lot of pressures. Our beloved Ned Johnson said something about a parent once saying, Well, how can I go to graduation and not tell people where my kid is going to school? Maybe it was my friend Ellen Broughton. She'd be great. Somebody great for you to talk Oh, I love Ellen. We're good friends. Oh, I forgot you talked to Ellen. Yes, right. So one of them said that, you know that the parents feel that pressure.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, there is a lot of pressure for parents out there. And I just a plug to parents listening. That may be a real problem in your life, but it's your problem, not your kid's problem,

Elizabeth Hamblet:

All right, Sheila.

Sheila Akbar:

Speaking truth to power here. Okay, let's refocus so you noticed as you started doing this work that high schoolers were applying for accommodations that you knew a college or your particular institution would not be able to provide. What happens with that situation?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

That's a great question, and that's what I was worried about. So hopefully students adapted and figured it out. There are sources of help. What parents listening need to know is one of the differences they'll find at college, is if your student has worked in the K 12 system with somebody with this background in special ed like I just happen to have, you know, for this college job, there is no requirement that they have somebody like me at the college level. And so if you were student, was used to having somebody create a study guide just for them. And this is something that they should really be learning how to do for themselves while they're still in high school. If they are getting extended time for all their papers and projects, then they should be working in high school to meet the same deadlines as their classmates. I'm very active in my community of professionals online, and I see things from other colleagues that I've never seen, like students who want to retake tests for a better grade. And while pedagogically, I can see, you know, a reason why a teacher would do that that is not considered a college disability accommodation. And so those students, again, need to prepare. We're anecdotally. And the worst thing is, I don't have actual statistics for a lot of this stuff. The data we have, unfortunately, is more than 10 years old. So there was a large longitudinal study, which is discussed in the appendix A of my book, where they looked at a bunch of it's 1400 students who had had at least one accommodation in high school, and followed those students that went to college and then did a comparison of the rates of receipt for different accommodations. And I think it's, you know, people would be really startled at what they found so different or shorter papers was, you know, given to less than, I think, 3% of the students. So these are the kinds of things that families need to be aware of. But also, again, note taking. I'm hearing I always like sort of frame this, this response of the people in my community who respond when somebody asks about note taking, so with all those caveats, and you know, containers there, the responses tend are trending towards saying that they are giving copies of appears notes only to students who physically cannot take their own notes, but For everybody else, the accommodation is permission to record, and in some cases, they are giving students access, free access, to note taking or dictation software. So there are some different brand names, and student goes into class with their laptop hits record, and the program is recording the audio, and then we'll produce a transcript, but remember that the goal of note taking accommodations is to help students fill in the gaps in their own notes, but not to replace their own notes, and not to help them figure out what's important that was set in class. And so these are all things that you know, and I say this not just scare families, but to try to educate folks and empower them. And say, you should know, I mean and, and there are exceptions, not not so much, to to the modifications we talked about, like retaking tests for a better grade or doing shorter papers, etc. But you know, occasionally I talked to a parent whose student did get extensions for papers and projects. Sometimes they do get note takers. So it's not, it's not all doom and gloom, but when we're talking as I think, you know this is your vibe, too. What I really want, and reason I do this work, is I want students to transition to college feeling confident and competence builds confidence, getting that on a t shirt one of these days. So the more students do for themselves while they are in high school, hopefully the less anxious they will be transitioning to college, because what I worry about is when students are not being held to the same. And I hate the word standards, because it kind of has a judgmental thing, but if they're not meeting the expectations set for their neurotypical peers, I worry about how they feel coming to college knowing that that's the case, or knowing that they didn't ever finish an assignment without an adult sitting next to them making them do it.

Sheila Akbar:

Right. Right. So we'll get to your book in just a second. But I'm thinking about, you know, we just had all these seniors commit to the college that they, you know, are interested in going to next fall, and for so many of them actually happened to have lunch with one of them last weekend. He was like, Oh, I'm done. I don't have to worry about this. Like, definitely senioritis is setting in, though he knows he still has to, like, you know, finish out the school year without failing anything. But, you know, he's worked so hard, they do deserve a break, and it's very easy for families to be like, All right, this summer before college, nothing on your plate. You don't have to get a job. You just hang out. We want to spend quality time together, but I'm always encouraging them to think about the things that you don't currently do for yourself, that you will not have in college. Mom's not going to come in and drag you out of bed in the morning to make sure you're on time. So. Nobody is going to be doing your laundry for you. Nobody is going to, you know, have food on the table waiting for you, though, can go into a cafeteria and get it. You still have to remember you need to go eat, and you need to make time for that. And whatever else you may need to think about around your diet or allergies or whatever. And so I really want them thinking about, even if there isn't a, you know, diagnosis of neuro diversity or a physical disability, I really want them thinking about, what do I need to learn to do on my own in the next three months so that I can get to college, feeling confident about those things? Right?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

You know, friends of mine who are the college autism experts, and that'd be another great conversation for you say that college transition begins in elementary school. And I they don't mean that in this scary way of like, oh my gosh, you need to worry about your kids, you know, second grade, grades, but in that again, expectations and building student autonomy are really important, and their their focus is on students with autism and things are challenging for them. But I think, you know, we're talking about trying to, if we, if we see a gap in skills, not just say, Okay, we don't have to do that at all. How do we get to the next place? Because, you know, remember that K 12 education is mandatory and college is not and so you need to be able to stay eligible, to remain at whatever college you go to. And when students with disabilities are struggling, it is not just the answer that we pile on more accommodations to make sure that they can succeed. And so there's an expression that we use all the time in my field, that you even will see sometimes on college Disability Services homepage. You know idea the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is what gives students IEPs, is a success oriented law. It is an education law, and it is focused on helping students achieve success. And again, this is not legal advice, so please, please, please, don't quote me, but our mandate is to provide access to our programs so the the laws in place at college. So just to be clear, so we talked about idea. So IEPs, because I DEA doesn't apply to colleges, IEPs, for all legal purposes, expire when students graduate from high school. Now, if you have a student who stays in the system because they're they're not ready to graduate, they still have an IEP, but whether they earn a high school diploma or age out of the system, they then no longer have an IEP. Now section 504, of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 applies in both places, but K 12 is under Subpart D, and college is under subpart E. Did I say that? Right? It's been it's only Monday, so gotta check myself. So those are vastly different parts of the law, and the mandates are different. And so we are there to remove barriers for students that are created by our environment, but it is not our mandate to make sure, for instance, that they keep a high enough GPA to stay enrolled. Or if they are in a fraternity, sorority, and it requires them to have a certain GPA to participate, that's not what accommodations are intended to help with.

Sheila Akbar:

That's a really great point, and also a really great segue, I think, into the book, because you start the book with learning how the laws apply to college students with disabilities, because they apply differently to students in college than maybe families have been used to

Elizabeth Hamblet:

and are being told,

Sheila Akbar:

Right, yeah, which is even scarier, right?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Yeah.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. So you kind of just describe to us how a college would look at what their responsibility is under the law. And I think it seems very important for families to understand that, so then they can kind of understand, yeah, what are those skills we need to build, what are the accommodations we may not be able to count on at this particular college or that particular college, or at college in general.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Yeah, and I think too, you know, sometimes the focus in when students are in high school is, you know, back to that, that that pressure that we were talking about make sure that, you know, Elizabeth earns the highest possible grades. And sometimes that is accomplished by providing a lot of human support and direction and accommodation, sometimes adjusting the expectations or the way that my work is evaluated. And so what I want to be clear about, too though, is that because colleges are not allowed to ask students. Whether they have a disability, and so let's be clear about that, it is completely optional whether students disclose that information. Sometimes I think people think, well, you know, we're just going to get her the grades and she's going to get into that school, and everything's going to be great. But if we are building student success on all of these supports and accommodations and modifications they're not going to have. Again, we're setting them up for, you know, a big struggle. And you know, again, we know from just the general population, a certain percentage of students does not get invited back to their first college after the first year. And that's another thing. So if at Hamlet university, you have to have a 3.5 to stay eligible for enrollment. It's not a lower GPA for students with disabilities.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, that's somewhat sobering. So where do families begin? Where should they begin?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

So I think the first place is to just educate themselves about the environment. And, you know, realize, every once in a while I think, okay, Grim Reaper, how's this conversation going? So I I do this work to educate folks again and to empower them and to make sure that they have an accurate picture. But literally, there are dozens of accommodations, and they are provided across all of our settings. If we provide a program we have to accommodate. So the academic ones are the ones that we talk about most frequently, but also in our dining services for students who have medical conditions, you know, that have implications for what they eat in our residence halls, so students who have wheelchair or, you know, an oxygen tank, will have room in their dorm rooms for that. So there are students going to college at all different kinds of colleges, engineering schools, big 10 schools, art schools, the highly rejective colleges. They're everywhere. And so that's really important to know, too. So I you know, once you understand what your student can and can't expect a college then it's, I think the college search certainly should look very similar to the way that their typical classmates conduct a search. And then, depending on what your students are interested in, then you can start to focus in on the disability services office. And so I, in my presentations, talk about college disability services offices as presenting three different tiers of support. And this is not formal. There's no official ranking system. Sheila, I'm sure you know the K and W Guide to Colleges for students with learning differences, I think they call it, and I'll make sure that's that and your book are linked in the in this time. Yeah, and my guess is there. They do it every two years. So I think they're due for a new one in the fall. And that is a tool to use. It's not an exclusive answer to everything they can, quote, unquote, only get a few 100 of the more than 4000 colleges in the country into this guide, and they try to provide some information about what the office does it. It does have a list of the couple of dozen fee based programs. So when I describe this, any any college in the country has to do what I would call Level One services or compliance only. They have to comply with the law. And let's talk about this. People say, Well, should I be worried that the college my kid wants to go to doesn't have to do disability accommodations? And here, there are three things that you have to do to be exempt. And the first one knocks 99% 99.9% of schools out of being eligible, which is they have to give up federal money. So with federal money comes federal law and compliance. So if they take Pell Grants, if they take federal student loans, if they take GI Bill money, if they take research money, they have to do what we're talking about. And that is even at the schools that are very hard to get into. It's not that because it's very hard to get into. Hamlet University, we don't have to accommodate and then there are schools that, for free, have some add ons at their disability services office. It's not a program. I'm putting up my air quotes because it's not really formally organized, but some schools have, like, a Friday autism game club that they can do. Last time I checked UMass Amherst, I think students there can meet with somebody. They're calling a learning specialist once a week for a certain amount of time, and then I think, or you know, or the frequency goes down as students move through their education. And those are free. I call that enhanced services. And then there are fee based programs that are structured, for which I said you'd pay a fee. And to be clear, a lot of students go to college successfully without utilizing. Those programs for me, and I don't do college admission stuff, but just my thought is, those are great programs for students who don't send them to college if they're really not independent. And think those programs will rescue them, but that just still need a little bit more, you know, regular interaction with somebody who will keep them on track students who were identified with a disability later in their education and haven't had a chance to learn some strategies. You know, the college consultants that I know that specialize in working with students with disabilities always caution, you know, and so do these program directors, yeah.

Sheila Akbar:

I was gonna say self advocacy and being willing to accept help. Those are two different skills, and even neurotypical people are bad at that, so we all kind of need to work on this.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Yeah, and so they can be great programs for students who are willing to engage with the services that are provided. But they're on my website. They're two blog posts of supplemental information from from their interviews for the book, and students still have to make an appointment and come in. And so if your students not up to that level yet, that kind of program is not going to be enough to keep them afloat.

Sheila Akbar:

Right. Right. So it is really about taking a realistic look at the laws and taking a realistic look at your students, independence, ability, autonomy, and figuring out what gaps are bridgeable,

Elizabeth Hamblet:

I think, well, put Sheila. Exactly, yeah. And there are a lot of great colleges out there that are really good fit for students, and so you want to make sure that they've got as much the more independence your student has, the wider open, in my opinion, their choices will be right.

Sheila Akbar:

And that's something we can always be working on. Great. Well, like I said, I'm going to make sure the link for your book is in the show notes. And I think it's, it's super useful, not just for parents who are going through this, but I know a lot of other educators listen to this podcast. It's such a valuable resource. I mean, I it's right here on my down on my bookshelf, and I do pick it up off, and I just mentioned it to a client the other day. And so it's, it's really, really useful. So thank you for for that work that you've done to put it out there, but leave us with, you know, a final thought here. What do you want people to really remember about this conversation?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Let's see. I would like for them to remember that college is a great option for a lot of students with disabilities, and just again, the more they can do to build students independence. Hopefully that will be accompanied by their confidence about the college transition, and that's what we want. I think the more we can make what's the word not transparent to students, but apparent, let's say to students, as they move through college, you talked about laundry and you know, making appointments for themselves, the more we transition over to them for responsibility, the more capable they're going to be. And that's what we want, you know. And again, I think sometimes this, I think that that's universal, but when it comes to students with disabilities, sometimes loving parents kind of say, well, honey, I know you. You need to focus on your, you know, your schoolwork and this, and I'm going to take care of all of this for you. And there are ways to scaffold teaching them this stuff. So as I suggest in the book, I recognize a lot of high school seniors are not that interested in doing the research I suggest about a college's disability services office. I wouldn't completely do it for them. I would engage them on a couple of different sites and do it together, just to show them what's there. Because you want to going to college doesn't mean you no longer need any support. And there's a great blog post that a colleague wrote this weekend about self determination, and she made a point I tried to make in the book too, which is, self determination doesn't mean you make all those decisions by yourself and you never consult anybody. Good Self Determination includes reaching out to your resources and getting help. And so that's the point. I think people often have such good intentions with their students, and they just think, if I just do this for them, if I just do this for them, then they're going to be able to but they have to do the stuff themselves.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, we're robbing them of an opportunity to learn to do it on their own. And I mean, I have a young child, and so there are many mornings where I'm like, I'm just gonna tie your shoes for you. We gotta get out the door. But you know, I you have to stop at some point, and they have to be able to do it on their own. And then, you know, he's fast enough now that he can do it right, but that wouldn't happen if I kept doing it for him.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

You and I are both big fans of Ned's, and he and Bill talk about studies on pre. Parental stress, and they always refer to that study where the parent that I think, was all mothers observing their kids working on something, and how stressed the mothers were getting watching their kids not get it. So I'm a parent who might might have adult kids, but I understand what it's like, but we also don't build their resilience if we snow plow everything out of their way, you know, and I don't mean that pejoratively, I know that's a loaded term, but in other words, if they never, ever experience any challenges or have to work things out for themselves, again, as you said, we are robbing them of important opportunities to build important skills, absolutely.

Sheila Akbar:

Well, I think we'll leave it there. Sure This has been a great conversation. You've mentioned your blog a couple of times. Where can people find that?

Elizabeth Hamblet:

So yes, if they search for my name, it'll probably come up, but it's LD advisory, and that is spelled L, D, A, D, V, i, s, O, R, y.com, and so if you go to free resources there, you can see, first of all, all the tools for college students that I use with my own students. They are available for free, for anybody to access. And then under the college information is, I think it's 57 blog posts all about going into more detail about what students need to be ready from the book, what disability services see in students who do well and what they see in students who do not do well, and the the one hold back from the blog that's only in the book is the interviews with college admissions directors And what they said about how they view transcripts and what they think students should do as far as disclosure. So if you want to do that, it's it's in step six.

Sheila Akbar:

Gotta get the book. That's right. Okay, Elizabeth, thank you so much for your time. This was great.

Elizabeth Hamblet:

Thank you, Sheila. I really appreciate it.

Sheila Akbar:

I really could have talked to Elizabeth for a whole lot longer, and we will definitely have her back on the show to talk about some more specifics, but I do hope that that gave you a really helpful overview, like she said, We don't want to bum everybody out or be the Grim Reaper. I think was her the words that she used, but we do want people to be informed and to be able to plan ahead. And of course, the best outcome in these situations, when there is a gap between what a student might need and what a college can or will provide is to help the student build the skill or learn to accommodate the challenge themselves. And that doesn't happen overnight. That takes a while to get them bought into working on something, and then to actually work on it and to master it. So I hope that if, if this information is relevant to somebody that you know, that you care about, you'll go to her website and read her blogs, you'll listen to, you know, one of her webinars, and you'll get the information you need so that you can make the plans that you need. All right? Well, that's it for this episode. Next time I'm going to be sharing panel discussion on college essays, because yes, it is that time of year. If your student is a rising senior just finishing their junior year, they absolutely should be thinking about their college essays. And it's a really difficult, thorny, scary task for a lot of high schoolers, and we know that just drives parents even more crazy. So we want to share some information to help you contextualize it, to understand the point, and give you a couple of really easy starting points so that you can help guide your student through this process. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time. Thanks again for tuning in.