In this episode, Josie Bober and Aaron Norman discuss Diversified, a student-led project empowering neurodiverse students. Josie, Aaron and their team collaborate with UNSW‘s neurodiverse communities to workshop inclusive course design practices. Also: Microbiology, blingin’ shoes and Kundalini dancing.
 

Josie Bober (she/her) is a neurodiverse UNSW Art and Design graduate process-led-graphic-designer--pixel-pusher-charcoal-smooshing creative working from her design studio in Sydney. She works with her hands before digitally finalising to create bespoke visual identities and eye-catching promotional graphics.

Aaron Norman (he/him) is a neurodiverse first year neuroscience student. Aaron and Josie both founded a program called Diversified which is a workshop program designed to help neurodiverse student rethink academic education and have a voice in their academic learning structures.

Diversified is a student-led project elevating student voice in course design.

Diversified on Instagram
Diversified on Facebook
Diversified Linktree portal

Josie and Aaron are interviewed by Aria Joshes

AD School Matters Ep 03 Transcript

^{Diversifed: with Josie Bober and Aaron Norman}

Aria Joshes (AJ): Hi, and welcome to the AD School Matters podcast. I'm your host Aria Joshes-Waterford, and I'm going to be interviewing Josie Bober and Aaron Norman who are the creative minds behind Diversified, a workshop program for neurodivergent people at UNSW. Hi, Josie and Aaron, thank you for joining me in the podcast today and welcome to Arc’s AD school matters podcast. Could you introduce yourself to the audience at home? Who are you? What are you studying at UNSW, and how did you start studying? 

Josie Bober (JB): Hi, um, I'm Josie and I am a human woman. Um, I'm a pixel- pushing charcoal-smushing creative. Um, and I work out of my studio in Sydney. Um, I'm a total cat person...I love the rain. I love having a nice hot cup of tea and enjoying my own company. I am neurodiverse. Uh, ADHD, depression, anxiety, traumatic brain injury... so yeah, hit the jackpot there! and I've just graduated in August. 

Um, I didn't get to have my ceremony, but, um, that will be in at the end of the year when we're all finally out... and I mean, to be fair, I would love to be Inside, still off the like condoned introversion thing we've got going on. So it'd be great to have that option still. 

And so I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphics and in drawing. And it was really great to have that balance between the art-conceptual thinking and the design. It's no longer offered, but. Yeah, I think it was a really great opportunity to be able to do that. I really love graphic design. Now I'm quite involved in the community... well, it was when it was all open and everything and we could go to the meetups. Yeah. I started, I started studying in 2016. Quite a lot of life stuff happened between then and now, but I'm very proud to say that I finally grabbed it, especially as someone who's neurodiverse.

AJ: Over to you, Aaron!

Aaron Norman (AN): So. Hmm, no problem. Sorry. I'm actually, um, me and Josie actually best friends. Uh, my name is Aaron and I'm a human male I love dogs. Um, I love the sun. Winter’s ok, but I definitely prefer the Summer. I love the beach. I also like long walks on the beach! (Laughs)

AJ: (Laughs)

AN: I am neurodiverse, I have ADHD anxiety and a few other things. I'm studying an advanced Bachelor of Science and I'm majoring in neuroscience and microbiome. Um, I started in 2000 and... last year? Yes, last year! Yeah. That's about it. 

AJ: Would you two like to explain the project you're both working on together?

JB: Yes, we would love to! So this has been taking up a lot of our time in the last, but for me, it's been like a year now. Um, and I brought Aaron onboard... maybe three or four months ago now? Yes...! Time's gone very quickly. I might just read out the blurb because it will keep my thinking logical and then we can talk about it after:

“So do you identify as neurodiverse or living with a disability?  Are you a student or course convenor, interested in inclusive teaching and learning?  Diversified is a student-led project with the aim to elevate student voice in course design in a safe, inclusive, accessible, well student instructor co- production...” 

There's a comma in there somewhere or a full stop.

“Student instructed co-production replaces the typical hierarchical teacher-student relationship with a peer-to-peer relationship creating a culture of cooperation and inclusivity.” 

So, if you come along to these, which we would, we would love as many people to be involved with this as possible because we want to hear the student voices! We really want to hear everyone roar because it's our experience that thing do need changing... And we've got quite a few voices now in different faculties from all different walks of life say “We want more, we want their task.”  And so we've got three weeks that we're working on currently, and the first one we mapped the issues and the opportunities.

So I approached one of my course conveners, Ian Mcarthur he's I'm an associate professor and he (laughs) I think he was quite astounded by the fact that a student approached him with a different course outline and a different assessment brief cause I'd redesigned them. And I went: “This isn't working for me where the dates and the times don't know where they are, you know, things are changing, why doesn’t the core sign match the assessment brief... Things are changing. Why doesn't the court sign, match the assessment brief” 

For someone who has a finite attentional memory resources, it's actually quite difficult to keep up and to make that chasm up, to sort of meet in the middle and try and keep up with everyone in the club. That results in emotions like shame.

And that's often carried in silence with students, and open up that conversation is just...really important. And it's really great to see that we had more people come on board. Lots of people became excited about this. We've got professor Terry Cumming, and she's involved quite a bit in UDL which is Universal Design for Learning Principles.

And if you look into that, it's a very exciting field because it does actually promote neurodiversity within every educational sphere. It's just a different way of learning, but yeah, it's come a long way. We got the EDI grant, the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion grant and we were able to start developing these workshops as a team. 

So we've got Terry Cumming; We've got a, uh, Ian Mcauthur;  two Karens:  Um, so you've got Karen Watson, and Karen Chris; and Holly Bowman, and oh my gosh, who else do we have? Well, Aaron and I we’re currently academic researchers which is a really cool thing, and Emily Chandler! Of course! (Laughs) It was actually Ian and Emily and I that actually did  the pilot, like handout where we'd worked together before we even started this workshop series.

AN: What can I add on to that? Well, it was interesting actually, because before this actually the ball started rolling. Like me and Josie would always talk about problems we had at university, but couldn’t really do much, it was just like discussing problems and then finding our own solutions. And now we have the actual platform to make this happen, whilst.... I think on a lot more student voices. It’s just going to be such a powerful movement I feel- and very exciting, ‘cause our first workshop is coming Friday.

JB: And you're in charge of that, actually, of the actual of the project itself- Not the project! (Laughs), but the process of the the content and how that's going to be.

AN: How we're going to guide the trial session to just kind of be just a, a conversation, prolonged conversation of sorts where people can verbally discuss problems that they're having or any way they want to contribute, they can. And then, yeah, just by asking some impromptu questions in between just to kind of stimulate some sort of focus-grabbing if possible. 

JB: So for me, this has been really fun experience of like grabbing together all of the different disparate parts of the project and bringing it all together so that it becomes more of a seamless experience as well. Um, ‘cause we've got to get people to interact and people do that in all different ways.

Like if we think about neurodiversity: you know, people like to speak, some people prefer writing. Some people like—we’re really opening this up and the more we open it up, the more of a challenge it's been to try and make this a seamless experience, but it's been more ethic. So I've been sort of designing the experience of the project itself and also they're really cool graphics. (Laughs).

I'm really proud of them, actually!

AN: She’s done an amazing job!

JB: I'm really proud of them. It's been a great way to. You know, tie together the end of my degree and saying “Hey, this is a thing I've done!” 

AJ: So could you tell us about your practice, Josie? 

JB: Yeah. Okay. So I always feel like a bit strange when I'm asked this question because I don't think I approach my practice like other people do, which tends to be the way things roll in my life. The way I like to describe it as that I have like frantic flurries of impulsivity.

And because I have ADD I there's, this thing that happens where I pick up something I really enjoy. I get really excited about it and I do it for a while. And then I just sort of get bored. And then I think up the next thing and then like, but what's happened in this cycle of things is that my practice ends up being a way of taming those flights. And basically when I'm working, it's not like I really do premeditate much of what I do. I actually let the process make meaning. So one stroke informs the next and it's very intuitive and I see it as a way of being meditative and like...meditative? Is that a word? Um, and it stops my brain. It literally, for a moment, my brain just--- Zen. I think people call it “flow” usually. 

So if I have to sum it up and categorise it, it's very much like an extended collage where I – I actually have like stuff behind me, but it's very lurid, very colorful, very crazy, people say that they feel crazy looking at it. Maybe there’s a better word for that where it does just look like I'm sort of scribbling and like having a lot of fun and, uh, you know, just testing things as they come up and, and playing around and experimenting, like using scanners and, you know, bringing things in digitally and then you work in analog and then back and forth, back and forth recycling things, and really just extending that playfulness.

If I had to like sum it all up, I actually did sum it up-- I said it's like the love child of pop art, glitch.  Carson-esque experimental typography, something sprayed on a wall in Marrickville and Egon Sheile’s self-portraits. 

AJ: Awesome. And would you like to explain what your science practice is all about? 

AN: I think with like having ADHD like I'm so hyper and then to me to sit down and learn and not be able to move while I’m studying organic chemistry like this, like I am this term it’s very challenging, but I think if there's no passion behind what you're learning so hard to-- to have developed a practice that works well.

And I find that, um, like we all I'll get the chemistry course that I'm doing. I actually quite love it. So it's just kind of easy just to kind of well, reduce the fear. And I think with science in general can be a bit like scary, especially in chemistry and physics. If I had say... But, um, I'm more into biology and yeah, that's just what I love.

Like taking time out, just to kind of reset as well. If something scares you or something's just kind of made you anxious or throwing you off because there's a lot of math involved in chemistry and it can be quite like daunting sometimes. I definitely have to watch like say YouTube videos or just like do my own kind of research and something rather than like what the lecture slides or lecturer has kind of lectured about. 

Currently my goal is to do a PhD in neuro-microbiology, which I think would be interesting because, uh, just even setting that goal for myself, like to be able to do a PhD there's a lot of research and a lot of just, yeah, research within a certain field, and it's very... (laughs) reading’s not my strongest point, but I think that like to set this goal for myself would be amazing because like, to me having ADHD, to attain that goal and then to be able to potentially like help other people break it down in the context that I actually needed to, cause I need to break these down to the smallest possible level to kind of understand it.

JB: This is where Diversified comes in, the whole concept of like, that's the sort of thing that will be talked about. When I was in my theory classes, even in art, I would go like red in the face, like “Where’s that link?” I don’t-- these concepts, I'm about two weeks behind. And so it just goes to show like, even between the three of us there’s just so much difference. And, um, the need to fill those spaces, like I would use transcription technology. Like I would actually have my texts read to me in a ro- almost like robot voice in order to try and keep up. So...yeah, you make such good points, Aaron

AJ: Definitely


AN: Like, another thing that I kind of find I struggle with is like... there’s a lot of jargon in each field. And it's like crossing over between like biology and chemistry. There's a lot of like symbols and just words, which like, you kind of have like, you're sucking in all this information.

And then like, you've got to kind of lose, lose concentration or focus by like Googling what this word meant, just so you kind of pick up the whole kind of thing whilst you're actually like still learning, listening to this lecture.

AJ: Okay. Cool. So how has your practice been impacted by the global pandemic or studies? 

JB: Well, my practice has changed, but like, it's more like a sidestep, um, because it's actually, because I'm a designer it’s like... design is a way of thinking. It's not necessarily, it's not a” doing”. It's not a “thing”.  It's a mental process and it's a way of applying design thinking to change processes as well as creating pretty pictures. So there's a lot more than creating pretty pictures and it's been really great step in the direction of the course co-design. 

They’re calling it “course code production”, but it also is co-design. So it's been really interesting, um, especially working with Ian, Ian Macarthur because he does things like this and he was a graphic course convenor.

It's really cool to see extension of skills within the same industry. And so I'm currently employed UNSW as an academic researcher, so that's really cool. And starting this project going straight from studying to being on the other side of it has been really interesting and it's really cool to like feed my brain with all sorts of new ways of working and going “How do I make this process work?”  as opposed to, you know, “What's the typography?” or “What's the layout?” but like thinking beyond the thing and more about how to change things through design, through the actual practice of designing the workshops and being involved with that and, and being among team, because I was really used to working on my own, actually a freelance graphic designer. And I have been doing that since the middle of my degree, and it's been challenging but really, really rewarding.

AJ: Oh, wow! Aaron, what do you have to contribute to this question?

AN: I'd love to, I'm just trying to process what Josie was saying. (Laughs) I’ll process away in my head while I’m saying what I'm saying. I think that I’m...because, like for me in the fact of like studying into the actually science, it's like having a lab that’s online is not favourable, I think for anybody, but like, for me, especially like I'm very hands-on and I guess with ADHD, I have like...like long-term retention problems as well as other memory problems. But like, if I'm doing something hands-on like, my body kind of remembers it and it just helps my like, my memory. Right now with doing it online and watching a video of a lab experiment and then discussing the results and all that stuff. It's just not, it's just not the same. 

AJ: Can you describe to me a meme that made you laugh so hard you cried?

JB: Here's what I, um, I sort of stepped back from memes, to be honest with you, but anything from the Betoota Advocate really gets me! 

I listen to so many podcasts. It takes up all of my time. So I just come out with like random facts and stuff. I think, yeah I just laugh at stuff like my cats I find hilarious and like everyday little strange things. I find Aaron hilarious to me!

AN: I find Josie hilarious as well.

AJ: So have your studies at UNSW helped to give you a different perspective during this lockdown?

JB: But I want to start with triumphs because I think especially with our chats we've been having, in our meetings, Aaron... we were like, “Let's start with the good things.”

Cause I think at the moment it's a really. It's so easy to focus on the challenges, but I have really personally loved being at home, especially like at the end of my study--I am finished with my study-- but yeah. I have loved having my stuff with me as you can see, like my studio space, um, maybe you can't see because it's audio recording, but my studio is just like my happy place. 

Yeah, it was a good, because I felt like I wasn't really in my element when I was at university and in my studios. I’d come home feeling stressed in that I felt like I could have had a better use of my time at home. So I think that's been a really great way to say, “Hey, maybe this is isn’t something for everyone- what's expected for everyone.”  And it's another way it feeds back into the project.

The convenors have been phenomenal, in my case, they were phenomenal in these times because like, I usually need like an extra week and I have that because of ELS, but I was needing an extra two weeks. I am quite proud of the work I produce and I do, I did do well, but to have to, for the acknowledgement, to have more time to do that and to do it in the way that it feels comfortable for me has been really good.

...I think in the end there, I was just really happy to have graduated. I think that's pushed myself to get there and I got there even if I had to drop down to one subject.  

AJ: Has there been something that you've been enjoying during lockdown, like favorite podcasts, music streaming, you know, that kind of thing... like this podcast? (Laughs)

JB: Shameless plug!

Invisibilia!, And so Invisibilia is like, it discusses the often like invisible, um, forces that shape the world.

So I just listened to one recently and it was about the idea of breath and the societal cultural pressures and forces... say like if you've got protests and people use tear gas, what does it do to your breath? “ I can't breathe.” It's so fascinating. Like the way that we are able to engage with the world is like affected and politicised.

It's so fascinating. I recommend to everyone Invisibilia, um, Good Goals is very good in terms of streaming. I got through like the whole season in like... two days!

AJ: Aaron?

I guess, um, I love listening to John Shanks, his YouTube videos. I think they're pretty funny. He also has ADHD as well so I don’t know if that’s the reason why I like him so much? But also like I... it’s a neuroscience podcast by Dr. Andrew Shuman, I love that. Might be a bit nerdy but oh well.

JB: We love nerdy here!

AJ: Yep! I’m a nerd!

AN: Yeah, the nerds! I think just, yeah, the Kundalini dances or sessions with Josie, are great, because like we love expressing ourselves physically, whether it would be like Josie through art or like, like through dancing. It's just so amazing. Especially if you to be able to do that with your best friends, still with the current circumstances. Its... yeah it’s very special!

JB: It’s how we met! We’re still dancing! Can’t stop us!

AN: Dance ‘til you die!...  

AJ: What's your go to activity at the moment? 

AN: I would say like going for a swim down at the beach, I live in Maroubra. I'm quite close to the beach, fortunately. And just going for a swim, even just going for a walk on the beach. It's just like, I'm very grateful that I live where I am. I do, because like that just, I don't know, like I'm a very beach person, like I love the water.

And I guess if I didn't have that, I think it would be quite difficult some days.

AJ: Josie, what’s your go-to activity at the moment? 

JB: The exact opposite of that. Um, so I actually, I might just put it up here... People won't be able to see this unless it's like, we're able to... but I ...I'm going to move around for a minute. I love painting on everything. So I did these like. They're a mule, a black mule that I've had that I just got kind of bored off because they were just black and boring. And I just like started painting them. I got some of these, like these really cool paint set by Angelus. They've got like... so many cool colours! You can mix and match them, but they're leather paints.

And so anything that I can find that I can apply paint to, I have been doing it. And so I'm doing these really cool. Like, I mean I’m into like Memphis, the Memphis Group style 

AN: They look really cool.

JB: They do! I’m going to get rid of the orange, please excuse the orange. It’s got like a pattern it's um, so much fun. Um, I love the fact that I-- Me and shoe? 

AJ: (Aria snaps a screenshot of Josie holding up a shoe she has painted.) There we go. Yeah! (Aria and Josie laugh.)

JB: I love to go to Marketplace and go like “Give me your shoes and let me paint them!” Because I’m keeping them in circulation that way as well. So I'm not like buying new shoes and buying like other people's shoes (laughs) and then I'm painting them and then I'm going to put them up on Etsy or something! 

AJ: What's the one thing you're looking forward to most when going back on to campus?

AN: Um, like, ‘cause I've made friends online that I haven't met yet, and that would be pretty cool just to kind of meet them and also just kind of, I don't know, be able to meet the lecturers and stuff like that. I think that’d be pretty cool. Also just to attend a lab in person would be amazing. (Laughs) To get the full like, uni experience would be nice.

AJ: Awesome!

JB: I love that you’ve come this far and you still haven’t had a lab...! That’s nuts!

“I would like the full experience actually having my classes. That would be entirely great!”

AJ: Last question, uh, what inspires you right now, and have you got any advice for other students surviving lockdown? 

AN: Well, I think for me, like what's inspiring me is just working on these projects. 

JB: Um, that's what I was gonna say too. 

JB: I actually had like something prepared I wanted to say, and that was just, that I'm very proud of myself and I'm very proud of Aaron as well.

He didn't have to take on the responsibility of it, but I thought he would have been perfect- and he is- for it. And like, I can't... I think that's one part of it that I'm quite inspired by the way that Aaron has taken on the project with us and that it’s sort of he's like...  we’re the yin and yang type thing I'm doing like all the creative, like and design of things and like putting it all together and you’re putting logic in it, and you’re bringing me back down to earth, and so I think I’m proud of us. I’m inspired by us.

I'm very proud of the way that I actually, I was able to pioneer something like this. Cause it hasn't been done before. That's nuts! Um, yeah, and I always wanted to leave uni better than when I found it. And I think that that's, that's going to occur.

And I think the bit of advice that I picked up in like the last few months, like I was, I was during like... I was having a hard time at the side of the pandemic, a very hard time. And I think that would have been evident in the podcast I did with you. And right now I've dropped the whole, like: “I need to do this, I need to do that” and shaming myself. And, um, I asked myself now, like, what's the race? There's no race, like we’re all, we’re all in this really shitty time. We can't actually change what's happening right now. And so just savoring what you're doing and making the things you do exciting and fun for you is the most important thing in life [and] your life is the sum of all of the days you have, like, it's all of the moments that you have. And if those moments aren't things that you enjoy or things that you know, where you thrive, then you're going to be miserable. 

And so I no longer believe in the “no pain, no gain” thing and “nothing worth it comes easy” type thing because you know what, some things are meant to be enjoyable.

--just doing what I love to do. I would have loved to have heard that when I was younger, even, you know, I think a lot of people would benefit from just sort of not wasting their own time.

AN: Um, I forgot to give my advice earlier on. I'm just going to get that now. Now's the time for people to speak out because like this, the staff are more--- like they’re taking the feedback on board, like a lot more than I think they were before. 

I think for anybody listening, like really just don't hold back. And just, yeah, speak up about things that you not happy with all. Or... and just  reach out to other students and people like in general, and I think, yeah, just don’t hold back with like things you need to express. If you’re having problems on with something with it, because you never know where you’re gonna end up, like me and Josie.

JB: Um, and also like it's okay not to be okay. I know a lot of people are saying that. Not everything has to be fixed. You’re perfect just as you are. Society doesn't want us to think that, but you are. And I know that a lot of people are probably doom-scrolling right now.  And none of it means anything. So yeah, just do your thing.

AJ: I think you two are quite inspiring too for other neurodivergent people like me for instance, I'm neurodivergent. Because I think a lot of people they're struggling with their degree and sometimes they might not even believe they can.

I used to think that I couldn't, because I had so many setbacks. To see a neurodivergent person as an academic worker is really inspiring, like in involved in the, in the learning process is really inspiring because it makes us feel like more validated that we can do just as well as other academics.

JB: Love that! Like, we can see, like, to be able to see yourself represented I think is a massive thing. I didn't realize how important that would be. I think you're completely right. 

AN: It’s just...you don't know like know how much you contribute or change things because the current system, like the way things are designed, like they're just not structured for us neurodivergent, um, students. Yeah. 

JB: I think. It reminds me of that. Uh, what was it? There were those podcasts I was listening to, and it was about the curb cutting the curb cut thing where the students, they were like the first ones in wheelchairs within their, within the university in America.

And what they did in the middle of the night was they laid down like they cement slopes--they were wheelchairs! These people were wheelchairs and they were putting cement slopes down on the pavement. And this is like things that like intersections and things like that. And what happened is that they benefited from that so they could like roll onto like pavement on cross the road. Who else benefited from it? People with prams. Our elderly! You know, people who may need that subtle sort of thing, the specific becomes universal. And the thing that helps a few will help many. And I think that's the important take home thing from what we're doing with this project, which may be like one of the first things that occurs um, at our uni for this sort of thing, and we hope that this will be useful for everyone. And it... UDL principles, universal design learning principles, are there because they are universal. It's just showing that the improvements we make are going to benefit everyone. 

AJ: Yeah, definitely. 

JB: I’ll have to remember the details for the curb-cutting episode, but it's an episode of 99% Invisible.

Well, I've really enjoyed talking to you two, about your program and your lives. Thank you for coming onto my podcast. 

AN: No worries

You always learn something new about yourself when you, when you do this, it’s exhausting!

AJ: Definitely, great.