ADA Assignment Reflection

My disability for the ADA assignment was to cook a meal wearing oven mitts to experience how it would feel to have a sensory disability and understand the types of struggles that they go through every day. I didn’t have much time to make a full out and extravagant meal, so I just grilled some chicken and made a sandwich with cheese, mayo, and lettuce. We only had one oven mitt and so the other hand was in a square oven mitt with no thumb or anything so it made it even harder. I started by getting out all of the ingredients, which already was a struggle, so I knew that I was in for a long ride. Even getting a plate out of the cupboard was weird, and hard. I started by trying to undo the wired tie on the plastic bag my bread was in. It took me AGES!! I had to use my teeth and it honestly took me a solid ten minutes. I was so frustrated and all my roommates were just laughing at me. I so desperately wanted to ask for help from my roommates but made myself realize that people with this disability don’t have the opportunity to just ask people to make it different and better for them all of the time. I felt kind of gross touching all of my food with oven mitts, but that’s beside the point of the assignment, haha. Grilling the chicken was pretty different, just because I couldn’t feel the frozen chicken when I put it on the pan. It was weird not having to worry about touching the pan and feeling the heat, I had some fun with it. Slicing cheese was pretty normal, and it was almost easier because it wasn’t as much of a worry if I would cut myself with the knife or not. Spreading the mayonnaise was normal. Tearing up the lettuce to put on the sandwich was so weird for me to not be able to feel the temperature. The hardest part was honestly just putting caps back on bottles, the cheese back in the bag, sealing bags back together, things like that. Even after this assignment I know that I will never understand this disability to the extent that it really is. I got frustrated really easily, to the point of where I didn’t want to talk to anyone anymore. I was mad that no one would help me and I was mad that it took me 20 minutes longer than it usually would. Overall it was an awesome experience that helped take a disability I had no idea about and how it would be to me experiencing it first hand and feeling for these people who deal with this disability every day.