Like thousands of young people each year, Rhiannon Clark, 17, decided to enrol on a college course after finishing her GCSEs. She chose animal care as it was a topic close to her heart, but soon came to regret her decision. Interested in both sciences and humanities, Clark says she felt bored and unchallenged by her new studies. She missed her days of being home schooled when she’d studied all manner of subjects.
On top of this, Clark found college “incredibly physically demanding” and “exhausting” due to her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome – a rare, inherited connective tissue disorder. Experiencing chronic pain, fatigue and dislocated joints as a result of her disability, Clark needed specialist transport to travel to college, a powered wheelchair to get around campus and a scribe to help her in class. But she felt the support she needed wasn’t always there, which made her studies more difficult. “As a result, my health declined, and I felt that college wasn’t worth the effort.”
