During the week of Nov. 22-27 the Carleton Disability Awareness Centre (CDAC) was hard at work doing its job building awareness. The method was simple: take a bunch of able-bodied students and staff, give’em wheelchairs and let them loose. Naturally the moment I heard about this I rushed to CDAC to scoop up my wheelchair.

 
After five minutes in the CDAC office I was off, skirting at full pace across the 4th floor of the Unicentre. However, my reckless progress was very quickly halted as I arrived at the elevator near Rooster’s . . .
 
I am a habitual stair-climber, I take the stairs rather than go to the gym, so I was not used to the long wait for the elevator. However, after five minutes I was on the tunnel level of the UC and off. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn and found myself face to face with a long uphill climb. I found myself wondering if getting to class was really worth all this effort, my arms were tired!
 
Finally I arrived in class; what was normally a 10-minute walk for me had doubled into a 20-minute struggle. I could feel my awareness (as well as the weariness in my arms) growing by the moment. However, class eventually ended and I was off, this time down the hill!
 
As that was the last of my classes for the day I decided to meet up with two other friends who were also participating in the Wheelchair Challenge for some good-natured fun. We began with a race: starting at the tunnel entrance to the Unicentre, we sped and dodged around bystanders all the way to the Raven’s Nest. At which point we made the decision to call ourselves the Carleton Wheelchair Gang.
 
In conclusion, thank you for reading my reminiscent ramblings. As an empathy-building exercise this was an unprecedented success. Everywhere we went in our yellow shirts we were asked about our experiences that day. I can now personally assure people that Carleton is not the accessible wonderland we think it is, nor is life in a wheelchair easy.