Ease on Down the Road: From Diagnosis to Graduation and Beyond, An Auto-Ethnography

This study was envisioned following a personal acknowledgement of perceived suppression of the author’s “unorthodox” approach to the research design process resulting in the desire to explore the role of the researcher’s experience in research design and ultimately in higher education. The author began feeling lost and overwhelmed in the pursuit of her Master of Arts degree. She felt that her particular values and methodology were not being validated or supported. Through the use of narrative, the author analyzes her own experience navigating higher education as one of the first in her entire family to do so, with the added challenge of a mental health diagnosis. Follow along as the author takes you on a journey to the past in order to understand how the challenges she faced can lead to changes in the way mental health is perceived in higher education