When the System Doesn’t Fit the Student: Mia Kinzler on Disability, College, and AI
In this deeply personal episode of The Smarter Campus Podcast, Zach sits down with his sister, Mia Kinzler, a sophomore studying Psychology at Loyola Marymount University, to talk about an experience that is often discussed about students but rarely heard directly from them: what it actually feels like to navigate higher education with severe learning disabilities.
Mia was diagnosed in fourth grade with dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and ADHD. She has spent years learning how her brain processes information and developing strategies to succeed academically. But in college, she has encountered a different challenge: a system of accommodations that can be far better at checking boxes than understanding how an individual student actually learns.
Mia describes being able to demonstrate her understanding of material verbally in a matter of minutes while struggling for hours with a written multiple-choice exam—not because she doesn't know the content, but because the format itself creates processing barriers. She shares the exhausting amount of self-advocacy required to receive support, what happens when an accommodation doesn't fit neatly into an institution's existing options, and how repeatedly struggling in environments that don't reflect what you know can change the way you see your own intelligence.
The conversation also offers a very different perspective on AI in education. For Mia, generative AI isn't a tool for avoiding thinking. She uses it as a cognitive translator—talking through her own ideas and asking AI to help structure those thoughts into the written formats college requires. She specifically tells the AI not to give her answers. Yet in an environment increasingly suspicious of AI use, the same technology that can provide accessibility can also expose students with disabilities to assumptions that they're cheating.
This episode isn't ultimately about AI. It's about whether higher education is willing to recognize that equal opportunity doesn't always mean asking every student to demonstrate learning in exactly the same way.
And Mia's message to educators is remarkably simple: when a student tells you how their brain works and asks for help, trust them.
