Case 1:    Emel                                                                       for the student

Who are you?

You are Emel. You started your study this year and you like the study very much.

You are studious, direct in your contacts, merry and can get along well with your friends.

In the beginning of the academic year your grades were higher than after the first 4 months. You spend much time on your study.

Sometimes others tell you that you look tired.

You have got fibromyalgia. You heard the diagnosis in April last year, but in fact you don’t want to know about it. You don’t want to be seen as pitiful nor do you want to moan. Your point of view is: if you persevere and work hard for your study, you will succeed well.

But often you are tired and you have difficulty concentrating on subjects (especially on long days of work). If there are several lectures in succession and you have to sit down for a long time (on not the best benches), pain will give you trouble. Sometimes you also get headache.

Your good and bad periods relieve each other. During bad periods you sometimes have to miss lectures but you do the best you can to work well for your study, to obtain high grades and to not disappoint your study group.

In order to make more time and energy you stopped your lessons in photography. You diminished your nightlife but still try to enjoy yourself as often as possible with your friends. In the mean time you need your weekends with your parents very much in order to pick yourself up. Then you sleep a lot.

It is not your piece of cake to confess “I am so tired” and besides your complaints change from time to time. So the one moment you cannot do something that you very well can do on the other moment.

Your fellow students don’t know anything about all this. If you are really too tired to visit the institute you cook up an excuse. Recently your excuse didn’t go down well and a few fellow students reacted a bit suspicious. You were fed up with this enormously.

Recently you heard vaguely something about possibilities to get provision facilities if you have got a disability. But you don’t know exactly about how and what. Besides you don’t know if something like this is applicable for you or not, because you only have got fibromyalgia, no disability of course.

What does the counsellor know or have seen or heard about you?

The situation since January of this year (which is nearly ended):

Emel started her study in August last year. She seems to like it and she is a diligent student. She is studious, direct in her contacts, merry and can get along well with other students.

Yet recently he has heard some grumble of fellow students about her.

Her grades are sufficient but during the last period they moved back. Besides sometimes she misses lectures. Yet she spends a lot of time on her study. From time to time she looks very tired.

There has been an intake conversation with her, without peculiarities. This is the second conversation.

The conversation

You still doubt about bringing up your fibromyalgia during the conversation or not.

In the first instance you don’t and on questions you answer vaguely, in general and side-stepping / avoiding. For instance if the possible cause of your study delay will be asked, you answer that you probably feast too much and/or the study is a bit more difficult than you had thought.

Yet you express a few signals that something is the matter with you.

Possible signals are:

-         you stopped your lessons in photography because they cost you a lot of time and energy

-         you are tired now (in general) and for instance because this conversation is at the end of a long day in the educational institute

-         you have some difficulty with your concentration.

If the counsellor doesn’t take up your signals, don’t speak about your disability.

If s/he does in a way you like, you bring up your disability in a hesitating way.

In any case for you there is no way to call your fibromyalgia a disability. So in the first instance you also don’t want to know about arrangements for students with disabilities. You don’t want anything that smells of an exceptional position or help.

Case 1:    Emel                                                                        for the counsellor

What have you seen or heard:

 The situation since January of this year (which is nearly ended):

Emel started her study in August last year. She seems to like it and she is a diligent student who asks smart questions during lectures. She is studious, direct in her contacts, merry and can get along well with other students.

Yet recently you have heard some grumble of fellow students about her.

Her grades are sufficient but during the last period they moved back. Besides sometimes she misses lectures. Yet she spends a lot of time on her study. From time to time she looks very tired.

There has been an intake conversation with her, without peculiarities. This is your second conversation with her.