My disability is well documented. So I have the option of using some accommodations. These are supposed to make the learning field a bit more equal. Or at least give me a chance of keeping up.

One of the accommodations is “note-sharing”. An announcement is made that any student who takes good notes may, if selected, have those notes photo-copied (at no charge to themselves) and be paid $100.00 at the end of the semester.

Granted, $100 isn’t a lot of money but if you are one of those people that take extensive notes it’s an easy $100.

Usually, the notetaker never knows who the notes are for.
I’ve never been too terribly concerned about that, and never made any special effort to conceal it, until today.

The young woman who signed up to take my notes said in front of the entire class, “you’re the one I’m taking notes for right?” and then proceeded to tell me how it would work, which was not the way it would work actually.

She said we could go and make copies during the 10-15 minute break between lecture and lab.

Unfortunately, I am using that break time to go to a separate room and take my quiz. I get accommodations yes, but I frequently have to give up something else that the other students aren’t aware of. In this case it’s the chance to go to the restroom, stuff a granola bar down before lab starts, chat, etc.

So I said, in what I hoped was a nice mellow voice that, unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to go with her while she copied the notes as I had other responsibilities during the break time. But that if she went to the OSD office they would explain everything to her while she signed the W-2 form they required. She shot back with “well the other girl I took notes for did it this way and that worked!” and I sort of glanced at her with a puzzled smile and walked to my desk.

Shen THEN turned around in her desk, so she was facing me as I was sitting further back, and started telling the young man right behind her that she didn’t really want to take the notes anyway and a few more bits about my character.

I seriously thought about telling her right then that I would prefer to find a different notetaker as I would not want to inconvenience her but I kept my mouth shut.

As she spent the rest of the break bitching and moaning about the use of logarithms in the problems and it wasn’t fair because she hadn’t taken algebra yet (err… does no one read the prerequisites these days?) I am hoping that she will find the class too rigorous for her liking and drop the class. At which point the instructor will re-announce the need for a notetaker.