Emilia Croke has changed how she infuses the use of her wheelchair for potential employers.Credit: Michel Lesisky/Posnan University of Technology
When I was three years old, doctors denied my tumor as cancer. Prolonged and weak chemotherapy, with delayed surgical removal which was jointly a benign tumor, caused significant damage, resulting in my dependence on the wheelchair.
Even as a child, I was curious about how things work, constantly digging deeply into the mechanisms behind the processes that we learned in the orbit. Long hospitals and recovery at home gave me the right opportunity to study and study. I realized that science and engineering were two fields that had the most influence on our lives, and I wanted to be a part of the change they bring. However, from a young age, I understood that this path could be challenging – not necessarily due to my health status, but because it would possibly require significant efforts to display others that my professional abilities are not defined by my disability.
I still wonder who people see when they see me in the laboratory: a sample-pro-supporter, a well organized researcher, a great teacher-or a woman in a wheelchair? The first time I meet someone, the final details may be likely to come to their mind. Although I can’t change how I will get or I need to adapt to the workplace, I can impress how people understand me – even in the first few minutes of conversation.
Application strategies
During the third year of my undergraduate studies in biomedical engineering, I prepared my first scientific CV while applying for short -term internships, an essential part of my study at Poznan University of Technology in Poland, where I grew up. As a disabled student at the beginning of my scientific career, I spent countless hours to reconsider each application before submitting it, arguing if I use wheelchairs. I knew that my CV was strong and my grade and educational experiences were excellent, and I wanted to evaluate on that basis. But I was also afraid to completely hide my disability. I was afraid that the workplace was not accessible to people with mobility loss or the company did not expect to adjust anyone with wheelchairs. I would have given priority to an immediate rejection after disclosing my disability in my CV instead of going through an interview, only it can be told that although my application was impressive for interaction, my disability eventually made me disqualified.
As a compromise, each of my internship applications included subtle signals, such as “I was a swimmer in the disabled student union,” “I had made two records in para swimming” or “I served as the vice -president of the disabled student union.” This approach made a proposal to work on data analysis at the Transition Research Institute. It was a great experience, but I felt that the data processing was only one aspect of the work I wanted to pursue. I missed the nature of operation of experiments, but felt deeply concerned about if I could work independently in a laboratory environment.
I studied my master at Molecular Bio-Engineering at Dresseden University of Technology in Germany, where I got an opportunity to work on practical projects in Protomics, Genomics and STEM-cell engineering. It was a supportive environment in which mistakes were adopted as part of the learning process, and colleagues and teachers guided me at every step. Although I was thankful that I could rely on the help of my lab partners when something was not accessible (such as a lab bench at a standing level), I did not know how my independent work would be.
But during my studies, I got an opportunity to find out various methods and techniques, which gave me a clear understanding of the challenges that I could. Before interviewing with potential supervisors for my master’s thesis – which I will write in the last six months of my degree program – I prepared a list of mentally potential difficulties and their solutions: “I will not be able to use the episle on a microscope, but I mastered focus on samples using computer software”; “I cannot carry heavy objects, but even in wheelchairs, I can operate a trolley with one hand”; “What if the supply is on high shelves? A gripper will solve it”. The list went away, but I quickly realized that I could navigate most of the clear issues. I arrived in fully designed interviews – not only to discuss the details of the project, but also to address any concern about my ability to work independently. I was ready to convince everyone that my disability does not obstruct my merit and laboratory ability.
Change
When I start applying for PhD programs, my approach to prepare job applications and handle interviews was greatly developed. I began searching for research posts six months before graduating from my master’s program. To refine my ability to create confidence and sell my skills, I participated in three interviews for the situation of the industry, mostly considered them as a practice without pressure to advance the role of their dreams. By that time, I had spent three years in studying abroad, I was fulfilling my first publication, I felt confident in my laboratory skills and for the first time, I began to realize that my achievements should define my abilities as a scientist alone. I stopped including anything in my applications that could indicate my disability. I wanted neither to be chosen due to my wheelchair, nor ignored because I could find it at work like a challenge. It was most important to me that it was being evaluated equally.
During an interview, my soon-to-S-PHOZNAAń University of Technology, physicist Zukasz Piątkowski- told me that, after receiving my CV, he saw me online and fully knew that I used a wheelchair. My social-media profiles are deliberately public-they show that, despite using wheelchairs, I travel on a large scale, have a wonderful family and service dog, crime love novels and, in many ways, live more active life than many people without disability.
For the first time, I could not only bring myself into a research group, but I found myself discussing what I wanted. Turning back, it jerks me that in my previous roles, I said to pain reliever instead of tolerating back pain using wheelchairs, just instead of asking for a place where I could lie and stretch – a symptom of being desperate to prove that I could do all this and will not be retained.
