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Home Education Real Housewives of New Jersey Star Blames Dismissal from Law School on Lack of Accommodations

MAIN MENU Real Housewives of New Jersey Star Blames Dismissal from Law School on Home Lack of Accommodations | More Advocacy

Assistive Technology Written by Administrator Tuesday, 03 August 2010 18:30 Career and Preparation By: Kelly Rouba Education Fans of BRAVO’s reality show Real Housewives of New Jersey are sure to agree that this season is perhaps the Government & Politics most dramatic yet, with more than enough catfights and backstabbing to last a lifetime. And while most of the on- screen quarrels have stemmed from trivial matters, one cast member has been dealing with a legal battle of his own Health & Wellness that seems to have touched the hearts of many viewers—especially those with disabilities.

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PDFmyURL.com Travel and Recreation On an episode that aired a few weeks ago, Albie Manzo, the 23- year- old son of housewife Caroline Manzo, spoke about his learning disability and tearfully informed his mother that he had been dismissed from law school due to his FAQ performance. However, “I didn’t receive any accommodations while I was there, and it put me in the position I am in now,” Albie Manzo said, adding that he believes things would have been different if he had received the What is New accommodations he requested. Useful Websites Prior to attending law school, Manzo never had any issues with getting the accommodations he needed. “With a Issue X | Sexuality Without Excuses learning disability, you get classified. I was classified when I was 12; it was in junior high school. You go through a series of tests with a variety of different doctors and specialists in the field,” he said. Talking with the Stars According to Manzo, he has what he refers to as a processing disability. “It’s a neurological processing disorder. So Service Dogs when you read something, your brain kind of connects the dots for you. So it goes from reading to understanding. Mine doesn’t exactly do that. It’ll take the information that I just took and bounce it around a little bit until it gets to the DISABILIT Y RESOURCES point where I can actually absorb it and compute it and understand it. So it takes me a little longer than the average individual to complete the task, which in college is okay. If it takes me three times longer, I figure, alright, I’ll just work three times harder and I’ll get through it.”

And he did get through it, thanks to the accommodations the schools and even Fordham University in New York made for him. Prior to college, “if you’re classified (with a learning disability), you become entitled to certain accommodations. For instance, it’s basically Special Education. I was in all Special Education classes for the most part,” Manzo said.

In terms of accommodations, “you get extra time on exams. You get handwritten notes from somebody else. You get...probably a lot of extra time on homework assignments. If there is a paper due on Monday and I just can’t get it done, they would let me do it on Wednesday or Tuesday. This was in high school. In college, it was the same type of thing.”

At Fordham, “I was enrolled with the Office of Disability Services,” Manzo added. “They would afford me those same accommodations.”

LEAT HER BAGS But Seton Hall Law School was a different story, he says. “When I had applied to the law school…my college Fordham had written them a letter saying that I was registered with their Office (of Disability Services). I wrote an addendum to my application, a page long, stating I had this problem and that I’ve had accommodations since junior high school. And, also, they sent I think 40 to 50 pages of my IEP (Individualized Education Program) over.”

However, Manzo never received the accommodations that were requested and says that was why his performance suffered, thereby leading to his dismissal. Get $50 Cash Back Bonus with the Discover® More Card! “When I had not done so well the first semester, I was placed on academic probation. I had a meeting with the Dean and I explained to him my situation again. And basically what happened was, I was told, ‘Yeah, you should really get accommodations; you should really get accommodations; call this phone number.’ They give me a phone number to call and I had called them. There was nobody there.”

Realizing he had hit a dead end, Manzo decided to try another route. “I wasn’t really getting anywhere with the PDFmyURL.com accommodations side of things, and I decided to go the medical route and I went with the prescription Adderall, which was a kind of tough decision for me because I don’t really like the idea,” he said, noting, “The side effects of something like that to me are just not very appealing. I am not an advocate against it believe it or not. It worked tremendously. It was like I didn’t even have a problem anymore because there was just no fatigue associated with BEST T OYS having to read (material) over and over again and you kind of get excited. It’s just like you have this new lease on life almost—(like) this problem isn’t there (and) I can keep up with everybody. It was a pretty good move.”

However, Manzo did experience adverse side effects while taking the medicine. “I…lost 20 pounds. I was grinding my teeth together so hard I started to have to wear my retainer again; my teeth separated. It was like a mess. I wasn’t eating at all—period.”

Even as Manzo struggled with the side effects, he continued to appreciate the benefits. “Hard work…was something we had hammered into our lives as young kids. My father, I’ve never seen him work a day less than 12 to 16 hours, and I’m not really afraid of (working hard). So, when I’m (at school and) I’m taking this drug…and things are going well, I want to cover as much as I can cover. So I was in the library. I was locked in my room. I didn’t see anybody. I lost friends. I lost a girlfriend. I lost everything and narrowly missed (the cutoff). And that was that.”

Also, what many people don’t know is that “law school is one test,” Manzo explained. “You go through the semester and you take all the information you received over the course of that year and you get tested on it one time. It’s a ACCOUNT LOGIN final exam and that’s it. And my grades are not a representation of how well I understood the material over the course of that semester. It’s how well I understood it in relation to my peers because of the curve. So, you can get Username an 84 on a test and be the lowest grade in the class and you get an F for knowing 84 percent of your material.”

“With a person with a processing problem, such as myself, where it only really affects you in relationship to other Password people, when you’re tested against those people, it comes back to bite you pretty hard and that’s really what this challenge was and I narrowly missed it, but I missed it.” Remember Me Manzo also admits that things might have turned out better if he started taking Adderall sooner. “To be honest with Log In you, if I had taken Adderall in the beginning of my first semester, we probably wouldn’t be on the phone right now.”

Forgot your password? Yet, he also questions whether it would have been worth enduring the side effects. “It’s great being able to Forgot your username? accomplish what you want to accomplish, but sometimes you look back and say, ‘At what cost?’ You look in the mirror and, first of all, you have this big time attitude. You don’t want to talk to anybody. It’s the Mr. Hyde part of your UNIFORMS GALORE day. But at the same time, you know you’re accomplishing a lot and you’re doing what you need to do. So you kind of overlook those things.”

At this point, Manzo is focused on rectifying the problem at- hand. “It’s just been challenging to right the ship, so to speak,” he said.

On a more recent episode of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, Manzo’s attorney managed to help him obtain a letter from Seton Hall stating that he could immediately apply to other law schools—a small victory since students

PDFmyURL.com who are released from law school must wait two years before they can retake the LSAT and apply for admission elsewhere.

Although he cannot reveal what his situation is currently, Manzo said he has already learned a lot from this experience. “I think what it comes down to is when we go through anything that is a challenging experience, you learn a lot about yourself and you grow and it makes you a different type of a person. I said it on the show, the hardest part of this entire thing is you lose your identity. I for a long time was ‘Albie Manzo, law student.’ It’s something I’m very proud of. I worked really hard to get to that point at all and then when you lose it, it gets taken away from you, you kind of have to reassess. You know, ‘what makes me, me’ type of thing. And that’s not a fun FEED DISPLAY feeling.” No Feed URL specified. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time Manzo has faced a setback due to his learning disability. “I was actually never even supposed to go to college. In high school, my guidance counselor said I’m probably best off to go into the family business or give community college a shot, and I told her I wanted to go to Fordham and she said it was a reach. I had an interview, I did great, and I got in. I graduated four years later, but it was tough,” he admits.

Having a learning disability has also presented other challenges for Manzo over the years. “The thing with a learning disability, the biggest difference between any other impairment is there are no outward signs that there is any type of a problem. Like even with me, I learned how to get around it around people. When there’ll be a page to read, I’ll pick out sentences and then just try and figure it out in my head if we’re all reading something together.”

Or, Manzo said, if he is sitting with a group of friends and they are reading the newspaper and asked if he will read the article, he might say no and ask them to tell him about it. “You don’t want to take extra time in front of people. There’s a feeling of inadequacy that comes with it that’s just awful but you understand, at that at the same time, there are other things that you get really good at. My thing was just speaking. To me, that’s why I wanted to be a lawyer. I loved the art of arguing and all that. I’m really good at it in my opinion.”

Although Manzo said his dismissal from law school has been rough on him and his family, he appreciates the support he has received from fans of the show. “There are so many people out there that are affected with the same type of an issue, and it’s a pretty eye- opening experience to say the least.”

He also hopes that by fighting for his rights that it will help encourage others to do the same if they are ever in a similar predicament. And he hopes that people with disabilities will not let adversity prevent them from pursuing their dreams.

“You’ve got to go with what you feel in your heart is best for you. Don’t listen to what anybody tells you, even when it’s good, because when it comes down to it, you know yourself better than anybody. If I had listened to my high school counselor, I would have never went to college. And if I listened to some people in college, I would have never went to law school,” Manzo said.

If you put your mind to it and commit to working hard, Manzo feels anything is possible. “To me, that’s the secret ingredient to everything because there’s not really a lot of that going on these days anyway, and I feel like if I’ve got that going for me, everything will be okay. To me, I feel like if you work really hard and you (are) good to people and you’re a good guy, things will fall into place. You know, you might have to go through some stuff, but that’s fine.

PDFmyURL.com There’s nobody that is successful in this life that hasn’t failed at least once and I’m not afraid to do that.”

Overall, “I think that it really comes down to just trying your best and working hard—and someone’s heart and your willpower, those are the intangibles. You can take as many IQ tests as you want and tell me how smart I am in this and how deficient I am in this…and take this pill and take that pill, but you can’t tell somebody with a drive and desire how far they can go.”

“There are movies about people that do amazing things all the time—be the next movie. Break the mold; do what you’ve got to do and don’t make excuses for yourself. It’s one thing to be affected by a disability, it’s another thing to be a victim of a disability and that’s not what I’m gonna be and I don’t think anybody should.”

Although he isn’t sure what his future holds, Manzo thinks it is starting to look brighter. “It’s a difficult journey, but I feel like I’m coming around the bend. Whatever it is, I’m going to be happy and I’m going to work hard doing it and it will turn out for the best.” Manzo also realized it’s important to be passionate about whatever one chooses to pursue in life. “I’ve learned through this that you have to find what makes you, you and it’s not anything that you can take a test for. So to me, I’m going to find something that makes me insanely happy. I’m gonna be really good at it. I hope it brings a lot of success. I hope it’s just something I enjoy doing.”

And if an opportunity presents itself, Manzo said he is even willing to advocate on behalf of others with disabilities along the way. “If somebody thought that I would help other people in my position, I’d be more than willing to do that. I didn’t put this on TV to get any kind of pat on the back for what I’m going through. I’ve never looked at this disability as a crutch. I’ve never looked at it as ‘treat me special because.’ No, I’ve never wanted to be treated different. I want to be treated the same. If I could help somebody else out in my spot, hell yeah, I’d want to do it. It would be good because that’s important to me too.”

When it comes to facing adversity, some “people just can’t get it through their head that at the end of the day, you’re still a person. I told my mom very simply, the only way I know I have a disability is somebody had to say it to me. Otherwise, I do things the way I do things. That’s it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.” Why pay full price when you can get Las Vegas Shows & Dining for Half Price!

Last Updated on Monday, 04 October 2010 23:38

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