Diagnosed with macular degeneration, Karlie Rae Madere knows what getting the right help and resources meant to her overcoming her disability. In fifth grade, Madere was held a grade simply because she couldn’t see well enough to keep pace with her classmates. Fortunately, she got that help by high school and it changed her life.
“I felt confident and I was making straight A’s and realized I’m kind of good at this school thing,” she said.
Madere isn’t just good at it, she’s very good at it.
She’s been inducted into the International Dean’s List Society for exemplary academic performance at Nicholls State University where she’s majoring in secondary education – English and anticipates graduating in Spring 2018.
Madere, who lives with her grandparents in Des Allemands, got plenty of encouragement from them.
“My grandparents always told me I don’t have a choice, ‘You’re going to college whether you like it or not,’” she said. “But I knew I was going to go to college and make something out of my life. I excelled very well in high school once I started getting the right accommodations with my disability.”
The 23-year-old is legally blind from the genetic disorder, adding she can barely make out the “big E” on an eye chart or has sight equivalent to an 80-year-old. Madere relies on assistive technology, such as a Visio Desktop magnifier, to see words and images like wording on a screen or board in class. As she ages, her sight will worsen until she likely becomes fully blind.
“My life is a huge obstacle,” she said. “I’m constantly having to do things like going an extra mile to get things done. In school, something that would take a normal sighted person 30 minutes to read would likely take me 1-1/2 hours.”
To make this work at NSU, she gets extended time to take tests and it takes her longer to get her schoolwork done.
“Sometimes it gets discouraging because it takes me so long to do something, but I think about one day being a teacher and having students in my class who feel the same way I do,” Madere said. “A lot of teachers these days try to sympathize with students with their disabilities, but the students don’t really benefit from that help. They don’t understand what a struggle it was, and it’s why they don’t progress with their education or career.”
But that isn’t what Madere is thinking about as she prepares to graduate from NSU. She’s contemplating how she will use her own experiences to help others with disabilities.
“These mountains are all climbable,” she said. “You just have to find the right foodholds.”
Madere wants to bring her experience to these students so they don’t give up.
“I think that I’m very proud of myself because, in my course of schooling, I’ve been to a lot of programs and met a lot of other people like myself,” she said. “I met people who feel like they’re hopeless … like they’ve reached a wall … that the disability is keeping them in a jail cell.
“It’s not easy. It’s about willpower and faith, but there is always a way – you just have to find it. You have to believe in yourself.”
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