3.1 Amaka
Amaka is a first-year university student studying archaeology. She has always been fascinated by this subject. For as long as she can remember, she loved watching documentaries and visiting museums and historical sites and developed a particular interest in ancient civilisations.
As a child, Amaka loved to imagine herself in different historical eras, and at school, she used her vivid imagination and strong verbal skills to visualise historical events and enjoyed sharing her insights. Visits to castles with her family and school trips to museums with interactive activities were some of the highlights of her childhood. She was less enthusiastic about reading and writing, however, and struggled at school in these areas. She always read more slowly than her peers, she found spelling difficult, and her handwriting was very messy. She did well in subjects she had a passion for though, and this helped to boost her confidence, together with the support of her family. Her mother was an artist and did not read much herself, so although she encouraged Amaka, she was not worried about her daughter’s slow progress with schoolwork. Even so, Amaka did feel quite low at times and was bullied sometimes. She couldn’t understand why she found reading so difficult while her friends seemed to cope easily. She was also very clumsy and prone to falling over frequently, which was embarrassing, making her feel sad and different.
At university, Amaka has found it even more challenging to adapt, and although her coursework grades are good, she was disappointed with her results in her first end-of-term exams. She has also found organising her life and time very difficult without the support of her family and her previously structured life, so she often feels anxious and overwhelmed. A lot of the teaching is delivered via lectures which she sometimes finds boring, and she is expected to work through very long reading lists in many different areas. Amaka’s personal tutor noticed that she was experiencing some difficulties with reading long texts and structuring her writing, and signposted her to the student support team for an assessment and helpful study strategies. They directed her to supportive assistive technology (AT) and now she often listens to audio versions of her textbooks or uses text-to-speech and speech-to-text features on her mobile or laptop that help her increase the amount of information she can absorb.
While Amaka struggles with note-taking due to her difficulty in multitasking, she has been encouraged to record lectures and later transcribes them at her own pace. This method allows her to digest information in a way that suits her learning style, and she is also given access to PowerPoint presentations and slides prior to lectures and seminars. However, the process is time-consuming, and as a result, Amaka frequently finds herself sacrificing social events to keep up with her academic commitments. Given her innate shyness and lack of confidence, she believes this trade-off negatively impacts her social life and wellbeing and can make her feel isolated. This is made more acute given that many of her closest friends participate in various sports clubs, but she is not a natural at sports with her difficulties with co-ordination, so she always politely declines their invitations to join them.