Surviving Academia

The Vermont Connection Volume 40 (Re)Building, Resistance, and Resilience in Higher Education Article 13 2019 Surviving Academia Laura M. Aguilera University of Vermont, Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc Part of the Higher Education Commons Recommended Citation Aguilera, Laura M. (2019) "Surviving Academia," The Vermont Connection: Vol. 40 , Article 13. Available at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/tvc/vol40/iss1/13 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Education and Social Services at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Vermont Connection by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact . Aguilera • 85 Surviving Academia Laura M. Aguilera The process of healing from first episode psychosis as a queer person of color is not represented in the medical model, academia, or media. As a pansexual, non-binary, Latinx femme with a psychological disability, walking out of the hospital doors for the final time incited immense amounts of isolation that overcame my spirit because of the lack of dialogue around such healing. I assembled this zine with the intention of my intuition that somehow, somewhere, someone with my identities and positionality exists with similar trauma to mine from having experienced a mental health crisis. Zines are an accessible multimedia approach to sharing collective wisdom. The very definition of a zine varies as each publication can differ in size, art and writing media, price, and shape. Through this multimedia personal narrative of the different stages of healing, I continue to endure as a graduate student still affected by my trauma, I hope to center the power of personal narrative and lived experience as valid scholarship. Laura Aguilera is a first-year graduate student at the University of Vermont pursuing a Masters of Education in Higher Education and Student Affairs Administration and a Disability Studies graduate certificate. Their research interests include disability justice and social media accessibility. 86 • The Vermont Connection • 2019 • Volume 40 Aguilera • 87 88 • The Vermont Connection • 2019 • Volume 40 Aguilera • 89 90 • The Vermont Connection • 2019 • Volume 40 Aguilera • 91 92 • The Vermont Connection • 2019 • Volume 40 Aguilera • 93 94 • The Vermont Connection • 2019 • Volume 40 Aguilera • 95 96 • The Vermont Connection • 2019 • Volume 40 Aguilera • 97  (...truncated)