Monday, February 20, 2012

the real "hearing impairment": an essay.

Observations of a hearing student entering the Deaf culture.

A brief background.
For those who don't know me: I'm a hearing college student studying psychology in conjunction with Deaf culture and American Sign Language. I'm currently in ASL II. I've been fascinated by ASL since I was 10 when my Girl Scout troupe had to sign "Heal The World" by Michael Jackson. True story. I believe it was later that week that I stole my first library book (unintentionally, of course), a now-outdated ASL dictionary to start teaching myself the basics.

It was sometime around mid 2009 when I decided I would return to school to continue working on my college degree and knew that ASL had to be worked in there. Coincidentally, this was right around the time one of my best friends was pregnant with my niece that, unbeknownst to us, would end up hard of hearing due to birth complications. This, of course, only inspired me to throw myself into an already growing passion that much more.