Allegra Forbes, 2021

Allegra Forbes (she/her), 22 years old, is from Kerrville, Texas. In her interview with Rebecca Sime Nagasawa, she describes her experience with diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder, eating disorders, and depression. Allegra describes the process of developing an awareness of these diagnoses as disabilities. She notes elite school environments, such as boarding school and Barnard, as places where “absurd productivity” is normative. She mentions specific resources, such as reduced course load, unofficial withdrawal, and academic coaching as beneficial to her Barnard experience. Allegra explains that Zoom-based learning provided her with greater access to her education, because she was able to experience her disability with privacy that dorm settings didn’t encourage. Rebecca also discusses with her how environments like Barnard could be re-structured to be fundamentally accommodating towards everyone, and to address institutional barriers to student academic inclusion, rather than relying on “aesthetic” or “performative” forms of self-care.