College Admissions Essay: The Importance of Disabilities Awareness :: College Admissions Essays

The Importance of Disabilities Awareness Disabilities Awareness has played an important berth in my life. My present interest in it grew out of my early link as a child. In elementary school I was tending(p) the chance to serve as a student judge for disabilities sense art contests sponsored by the NYS Commission on Quality of Care. Children from schools all across New York conjure were asked to send in drawings to express their personal pith of equality and acceptance of commonwealth with disabilities. It was frightening to see how umpteen drawings unwittingly depicted a negative message instead of the positive oneness called for by the contest guidelines. Later I experienced the same touch when I judged a disabilities awareness writing contest and read many of the entries submitted by middle school students. After seeing so many negative representations of people with disabilities, I decided I wanted to do nearlything to help change the common misconceptions the gen eral public had. I started to restrain notice of the challenges that people with disabilities faced every day. Some of them were concrete problems wish the inaccessibility of buildings and the lack of accessible public transportation. I began to notice where people with disabilities couldnt go. I began to see that some of the worst challenges they faced, however, were attitude problems like the unending teasing or using the names of different disabilities as insults. I began to notice how people communicated (or failed to communicate) with disabled people. I observed that people purview someone with a disability was only a disability, therefore little human, and inferior to us. Expectations were low for them and they were more often sitting alone in a school cafeteria or not included in friendly events after school. I hoped that my involvement in a New York State publication like the Disabilities Awareness Newsletter would help correct some of the misconceptions and lack of information I observed in my own world. I began to write articles that centered around positive accomplishments achieved by active members of our union who happen to have a disability.