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CoolBee · 07-02-2009, 11:43 AM

I don't know what country you are in, but have you got something like a School Counsellor you can talk to?

I know nowadays in the UK, universities bend over backwards to help people who are having problems of one sort or another - health, relationships, finance whatever - but you need to tell them, they don't instantly know.

While I was doing my PhD, one of my jobs was invigilating the 'special needs' exams - these were where people with, say, dyslexia had an extra 10 minutes per hour of exam time, or people with particular medical conditions (or severe stress conditions) were allowed to have 'time out' for exercise or relief, so a 2 hour exam would still be 2 hours, but they might have a (supervised) exercise session if they needed physical therapy of some sort so I used a stopwatch to ensure they had exactly the 2 hours in front of the paper.

People with particular stress conditions (like panic attacks) were allowed to take their exams on their own with just me in the room and if they had an attack, again, I would stop the watch until they felt able to resume.

I can understand the uni not accepting a long-term medical condition (because if you have had it for years, then you will have learnt to function with it) but it sounds like you had an 'acute onset' just at exam time so they may accept that?

Maybe you can redo the whole year instead of taking resits in July? That would take a bit of stress off you.

07-02-2009, 11:43 AM	#3 (permalink)
CoolBee Family Member Join Date: Feb 2009 Posts: 2,044	I don't know what country you are in, but have you got something like a School Counsellor you can talk to? I know nowadays in the UK, universities bend over backwards to help people who are having problems of one sort or another - health, relationships, finance whatever - but you need to tell them, they don't instantly know. While I was doing my PhD, one of my jobs was invigilating the 'special needs' exams - these were where people with, say, dyslexia had an extra 10 minutes per hour of exam time, or people with particular medical conditions (or severe stress conditions) were allowed to have 'time out' for exercise or relief, so a 2 hour exam would still be 2 hours, but they might have a (supervised) exercise session if they needed physical therapy of some sort so I used a stopwatch to ensure they had exactly the 2 hours in front of the paper. People with particular stress conditions (like panic attacks) were allowed to take their exams on their own with just me in the room and if they had an attack, again, I would stop the watch until they felt able to resume. I can understand the uni not accepting a long-term medical condition (because if you have had it for years, then you will have learnt to function with it) but it sounds like you had an 'acute onset' just at exam time so they may accept that? Maybe you can redo the whole year instead of taking resits in July? That would take a bit of stress off you.