What is the right place and time for a neurodivergent person? 

Disclosure within an academic institution can often fall within a narrow idea of legal disclosure; when people think of the term they understand it as turning in paperwork that states you have a disability/neurodivergence. While in the context of Writing Centers, Alison Kleinfied wrote to reject the accommodation model that requires official diagnoses to get the accommodation needed, and rather accepting someone’s individual experience of struggle should be enough to allow support from the eyes of the institution (2018). It can be exhausting needing to base your needs, so reliant on a piece of paper that reads I have a neurodivergency, Yet, the idea of navigating disclosure in interpersonal relationships within institutions is yet to be had. The interactions I have amongst my own intrapersonal relationships all require kairotic skill in order to navigate within a neurotypical environment. Scholar Paula Saunders (2020) writes: “However, the choice to disclose (and how) is one of great risk, as significant stigmas could follow those who disclose their autistic identity in normative contexts”. Everyday I have I am constantly trying to gauge what is a good joke for the room, and what can be a joke that might fall out of context. 

Trying to understand what someone’s gauge is in their choices, is contingent on the specific person. Saunders (2020) explains, “What is significant about Mike's disclosure choices is his rhetorical sensitivity to time and timing, and his perspective that being autistic allows him to access time in enhanced, opportunistic ways”. Saunders' subject does not view kairoticism as a skill as particularly negative (it is also important to note that the subject does become unsympathetic at times to other autistic folks that might have different barriers than the subject, noted by the author). It can be understood that it is a skill acquired by those who may be neurodivergent as a way of soft launching their identity in spaces where it may not have been well received before. 

Gauging the right place and time can often feel like consistently finding places where you disclose your identity might feel like a constant game of guessing of where your identity may be placed as an advantage or disadvantage (Saunders, 2020). While seeing disclosure that way may seem polarizing, much of academia’s reaction towards anyone’s disclosure has been exactly that way, thus creating apprehension for a neurodivergent individual to express their identities or neuroses. 

Kairotic moments have appeared as analyzing my own relationship to my peers, whether or not I am close to them, or if I have established enough repertoire for me to sound like a much more vulnerable/personable version of myself. It is more prominent within institutionalized spaces such as the Writing Center. These times/moments can come as fleeting as most of the time, they are based on the experience of making the neurotypical person feel the most comfortable when interacting with me. Disclosure is oftentimes uncomfortable practice as post-secondary education has often been unwelcoming to anyone who has disclosed their neurodivergence for the benefit of themselves, or has invalidated my experience overall. 

Within the six years of going to college, I have only disclosed my own neurodivergence a handful of times, all of which were times that I knew that my disclosure would positively impact someone’s perception of me, or because I had needed to disclose for the sake of my own comfortability in the environment. 

However, it is not simply all bad. Much like Saunders’ subject, there is some positivity that can be taken from acquiring kairotic skill; in my case, it has looked like a community that does not require explicit explanations or disclosing neuroses to prove myself. I find myself gravitating towards the people that are also in constant social calculation, evaluating whether or not this person is queer enough to understand the slang I am saying. Some of my own personal gauging can look like: 

• “Are you chronically on the internet?” 
• “What side of TikTok are you on?” 
• “Are you in your Hot Girl era, or are you in your Phoebe Bridgers on repeat era?