Hailey Nicole Otis is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Political Culture in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland, College Park where she also co-directs the Oral Communication Program. Hailey’s lived experience as a queer, fat, disabled scholar has shaped her fundamental commitment to leveraging the tools of communication and rhetoric toward social justice and worldmaking. She is currently writing a book on fat-positive worldmaking within the online body positivity movement.

Neurodiversity is a hot topic these days. We exist in a weird moment of contradiction where diagnosis rates of ADHD and autism are on the rise and treatment is becoming increasingly normalized while, at the same time, future head of HHS, RFK Jr., is advocating for people on Adderall to be sent to “wellness farms.” For better or for worse, neurodivergence is more visible than ever.

Academia occupies a weird space in this. On the one hand, the trope of the absent-minded professor is surely an indicator of just how common neurodiversity is in our world. And yet, in practice, academia thrives on individualistic competition and promotes a fetishized productivity that does not make any space at all for vulnerabilities of the body or mind.

So, when someone comes into academia with a neurodivergent brain, they are not made to feel welcome. That was certainly my case. Like many fellow women and femme neurodivergent academics, I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was well into adulthood and over a year into my first tenure-track job. I grew up a boisterous yet inquisitive little girl who struggled to make friends and couldn’t keep track of anything that wasn’t attached to me. My laziness and poor organizational skills frustrated my parents, yet getting good grades in school rendered me too “high-functioning”* for anyone to expect anything was out of the ordinary. The debilitating anxiety, disordered eating, and chronic pain that soon followed would never be recognized as embodied manifestations of trying to function in a world not built for a mind like mine.

It wasn’t until I was studying for comprehensive exams during my doctoral program that I started to realize that my experience wasn’t “normal.” Of course, studying for comps is hard. Hell, everything about getting a PhD is hard. However, apparently it isn’t “normal” or common to feel like you’re about to crawl out of your skin every time you sit down to read things you really actually want to read. Apparently it’s not “normal” to put every ounce of thought and energy you have into writing a seminar paper for days on end, only to find that you can’t produce a single comprehensible sentence until midnight before the paper is due. Apparently it’s not “normal” to feel pure panic every time you look at the reading list for coursework, knowing that it would be impossible for you to read and absorb that many pages a week. And apparently it’s not “normal” to bang out an absolutely brilliant—and, later, award-winning—rhetorical analysis of body positive Instagram posts during six uninterrupted hours of pure focus and zero movement, meals, or bathroom breaks.

After many hours of soul-searching and many conversations with neurodivergent peers, I began to recognize that I was neurodivergent in some way. My interest in pursuing a diagnosis was thwarted, however, by an overburdened campus counseling center followed by a global pandemic– not to mention the cruel irony of executive dysfunction. It would take many years after my epiphany to actually get evaluated and treated for my “attention-deficit.”

To be clear, I didn’t need a code on a medical chart or an Adderall prescription to validate what I already knew in my bones. I ground myself in a disability justice ethic that trusts disabled people and their lived experiences more than the exclusionary machine of ableism and capitalism that we call health“care” (especially in the US).

I also didn’t need a diagnosis to tell me that I was different because the glaring lack of people like me in the academic spaces I found myself in was more than enough confirmation.

Everywhere I looked, I felt the crushing pressure of neuronormativity (and all kinds of other normativities that I couldn’t relate to). I was surrounded by professors and mentors** that seemed to be everything I wasn’t—neurotypical, able-bodied, heterosexual, thin, conventionally attractive, married with children, etc. (Note I say “seemed” because the incentivization to mask one or more of these realities deeply shapes what aspects of ourselves can be made visible in institutional spaces, including academia).

They had their impressive daily writing routines that started at 6 am (my delayed sleep phase syndrome could NEVER). They talked of working 10-hour days and 60-hour weeks (who has that level of executive functioning and working memory?). I’d see them sitting in their offices, clacking away on their desktops for hours without fidgeting, stimming, or bursting out into song (didn’t think that was a neurodivergent thing? Try being a recovering theatre kid with echolalia).

I’d witness them catch a random thought during evening seminars and turn it into a brilliant analytical point or incisive critique in real time. I was stunned to realize that not everyone gets brain fog that triggers a daily brain shut down around 3 pm.

What other conclusion was I to come to other than I don’t belong. Academia isn’t for people like me. People like me can’t thrive here. 

But actually, the more time I spend in this line of work, the more I realize that there are a TON of us. In truth, there would be no academia without neurodivergents. Think about it. How many dissertations and books were written because of a special interest in the topic? How many of the most engaging lectures are just accidental (and subsequently beautiful) moments of intense hyperfocus? You should see my mind when I’m building theory. It’s a messy web of ideas, inspirations, and questions. The ability to exist with such chaos and somehow bring the threads together into something brilliant is absolutely something that happens as a result of (not in spite of) my spicy brain.

Yet there remains this rampant ableism (especially neuro-ableism) in academia that creates notable barriers for us neurodivergents. I believe it is crucial to bring more humanizing visibility to the neurodivergent academic experience—both to provide evidence of our existence as well as to illuminate some of the unique struggles and obstacles we face. Visibility is the first step toward making academic spaces livable for us weirdos. So here I am.

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*I prefer the language of “low support needs” (as opposed to “high functioning”) coined by disability advocates, often used in reference to the autism spectrum. However, the language of “high functioning” more accurately represents outsider perspectives on my experience with ADHD/neurodivergence.

**This is not meant to read as a critique or indictment of my “normie” mentors. I adore and am indebted to many of them, but also think it’s important to reflect on the ways in which myself and people like me (especially in graduate school) often don’t seem themselves represented.