College on the Brain- Input needed!

I just have to survive exam week and then I'll be done with sophomore year! Then, the day after I get out of school, I get to experience the wonderful pleasure of watching my sister graduate. What could be better than waking up early on the first day of summer to watch all 1200 students in my sister's class walk across stage and listen to a bunch of speeches from people I don't know?! I'm half kidding- I love my sister and wouldn't dream of missing her graduation. I can't believe she'll be leaving me in a few short months to go off to college :'(

Anyway, all of this college talk has definitely gotten me thinking. Navigating through college applications and trying to figure out what schools to apply to can be tricky, and it can be even harder as a person with hearing loss. In addition to things like the location, campus, and quality of education, a teen with hearing loss may also have to worry about having accessible dorms, class size, accommodations such as FMs, interpreters, CART and more.  Not only are there SAT scores, essays, and teacher recommendations to worry about, but also the question of whether or not to tell a college about your hearing loss during the admissions process, or to wait until after you've been accepted. Not to mention the fact that college is expensive, but there are so many additional options and scholarships for students with hearing loss. For example, did you know that any resident of the state of Texas with hearing loss can attend any public Texas college (that they have been accepted into) without any cost to them, regardless of their financial situation?

I feel like there are so many resources available for students applying to college, but so many of them are little known. I want to create the ultimate guide for students with hearing loss in looking for, applying to, and being in the appropriate college. In addition to gathering resources, I want to compile an array of personal college experiences, both good and bad. Anything from advice, to anecdotes, to articles on a specific college-related topic. Name and/or college attended are both option information, but if there is enough input I may even compile a list of college that have been great at accommodating students with hearing loss, and possibly also a list of those that have been less than accommodating. I'm not sure exactly what type of format I'd ultimately like it to be in- a website? PDF? Published book?

Yes, I am ambitious. These are just ideas I'm throwing out there. Please let me know if this is something you'd be interested in, I'd like to know if other people feel there is a need for this as well. Also, if you would like to help in anyway, please let me know with either a comment or private email, whichever you prefer! Suggestions? Thoughts? Please share with anyone you think might be interested!

I'll leave you with a few pictures from a recent academic awards ceremony at my school. I received an award from my French teacher. (Actually, most of these pictures were taken afterwards at my house, but still!)

Sisterly Love!

Check it Out!

If you're an AG Bell member, check out the latest issue of Volta Voices. More specifically, page 38 featuring yours truly :)

If you're not a member of AG Bell and would like the article emailed to you, just let me know. I'm going to see if there's a way I can post part of the PDF on here.

Getting Creative

As long-time readers probably know, getting captioning on school videos has been a struggle for me, (and I'm sure many other D/HoH students as well). All of my teacher have dealt with the situation differently, and sometimes I can understand the video pretty well without captions, so long as I don't have to take notes and can just concentrate on the listening part. Other times, it's some animated video narrated by an Irish guy, and I'm completely lost. In one of my classes we're watching a video that takes 3 class days to watch. It's in a two year class for freshmen and sophomores, so I had these teachers (there are 2 teachers- I have 60 kids in my class) last year. They've always been really accommodating and helpful, so they made sure to get a video with subtitles.

Well, once they went to play it, they discovered these subtitles were only available in Spanish or French. So, I got a summary of the movie, plugged my FM into the speakers, and used French subtitles. I could understand a large amount between my hearing and  French skills. It actually wasn't too confusing reading in French while listening in English, and it wasn't certainly much better than having nothing. I always thought learning French would come in handy, but being able to read French subtitles never really entered my mind!

Hearing Loss, Confidence, and my Second Week of School

Week 2 was also successful! The homework load has increased, and there has been an annoying amount of "busy-work" but it has certainly been bearable. It was pretty uneventful (except for a bunch of other sophomores unofficially declared on Tuesday "Scrub Day" which I find to be terrifying and cruel. If you don't know what it is, I'll leave it up to your imagination. Hint: It has absolutely nothing to do with wearing scrubs or cleaning). Since there's not much to say about that, I thought I would talk about confidence and how it has impacted me.

Over the summer I volunteered at a nearby pediatric hospital. While I had done it the summer before, this year they placed me at the front desk as opposed to being in the back filing papers. I was really excited about this, as it's obviously more a lot more interesting to get some interaction with patients and parents. I was in charge of giving directions and walking people to their destinations in the hard-to-navigate hospital. I certainly feel like it taught me quite a bit about speaking up for myself, as you can't exactly bluff when you mishear the location you're supposed to be bringing someone! As time went on, I also built up the confidence to go up and ask people who seemed to be wandering and lost if they needed help. People view you  completely differently when you act like you know what you're talking about.

This brings me to the school year. The (semi-)confidence to talk to complete strangers has proved essential for yearbook, since we have to ask people permission before taking their pictures. This also means getting shot down over and over (and over!) again, but I guess that's just another life lesson! It has also transferred over to my other classes, such as when I asked my teacher to change my seat since I was facing the wall instead of the front of the room. She was more than happy to move me, but I don't think the girl I traded with was too crazy about having to strain her neck for 50 minutes every day. Not sure why they position the desks like that anyway...

I also  built up the confidence to run for an officer position of my school's French Honor Society. To back up a bit, I had never been in the officer position of a club before until I decided to run for my school's Red Cross Club. My friends and I were pretty much the only freshmen in it last year, so this year all 5 of us are officers since there wasn't really anyone to run against.  We're hoping to get more students involved! Anyway, running for FHS officer was the first thing where I'd actually have to compete against other people for the position. Luckily for me, the winner is chosen by having an interview with my French teacher instead of having to give a speech and have members vote (baby steps!) To be completely honest, I wavered back and forth about whether I wanted to interview, and wasn't going to do it until the tutorial session I was going to attend before school was canceled, and I was already at the school so I had nothing better to do but to go and interview for the position. I hadn't prepared at all, but I managed to win the position I wanted, so that was pretty exciting!

Why yes, I am bragging

Do you ever have those weeks where it seems like nothing is going your way? And you just want to go sit in a corner and cry?
Well that's how this past week was for me. And the week before that.  I don't want to go into a long rant about it, but there were a lot of things that I had been hoping for..that just didn't happen. Then I got (and still have) bronchitis, and I kind of felt like locking myself in my room for a while.  We've had a week of TAKS testing, but the freshmen only had one test (while the sophomores had 3). That meant half of my week was spent sitting in class doing nothing. Absolutely nothing, except watch movies that were rated G or reading. Which can really old after a while. And, to top it all of, my Friday evening was spent in the school cafeteria taking a practice AP exam.
So, to put it mildly, I wasn't exactly wild about going to my classes today (after 3 hours of sitting in silence, that is). 
I walked into my French class and looked up at the board. "National French Exam- Top 10% scores", the board read. There were 5 names.
Mine was one of them.
It felt awesome.

"  While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done"  - Helen Keller

For those of you wondering, the National French Exam is about 50 % listening. The listening portion is typically played for all of the kids at the same time using a CD player. It's difficult for me to understand voices in English (let alone in French) through electronics so I got special permission for the script to be read to me by the teacher administering the test. I don't get any extra repeats, just a live voice that uses the FM, as well as that I can lipread if need be. That's also what I do for all of my French quizzes and tests, and I can assure you I wouldn't be doing nearly as well if I hadn't asked for this accommodation.

What my mom has done for me (This is for the parents...)

I received the following very sweet comment on my blog on Thursday.

"I've been reading your blog for a couple of months now. I must say that you are both a very good and a very entertaining writer. So if that medical career doesn't work out for you(which I'm sure it will), I think writing might be a good, albeit not very well paying, backup.


Anyway, I just want to thank you for your blog. It has really helped me cope during the past couple of months. While I am a long way from 15 (41 to be exact), I read your blog because one of my daughters (she's five) was just diagnosed with a mild unilateral hearing loss. Currently, she still has tons of usable hearing - her loss is at 35 db on the 2000 and 4000 Hz frequencies in her right ear, with the two lower speech frequencies still testing at 10 db. Her left ear tested at 10 db across all speech frequencies. So I feel fortunate that she still has so much hearing, and I hope and pray that her hearing remains stable.

But as you know, that's pretty hard to predict even with all of the anxiety-inducing testing that accompanies a SNHL diagnosis. So your blog has shown me that no matter what happens - even if she loses most of her hearing and will require CIs, she will still be able to succeed at school, have lots of friends, and have great aspirations like becoming a doctor! So thank you for that - it means a lot to a scared mom. I would also appreciate any advice you can give me on how your mom has helped you over the years cope with your hearing loss aside from just being a great mom and advocate for you. I'm new to this, and I appreciate any advice I can get.

I'm going to keep reading your blog - I learn a lot about hearing loss issues, and it's just wonderful to get a peak into the psyche of a 15-year-old girl who loves her life and looks forward to a great future while dealing with hearing loss, CIs, and the trials of being a teenager in general.


All the best.
Rebecca"

First of all, thanks Rebecca!
It's these kind of comments that I really appreciate, and they make me want to keep writing. So, Rebecca, (and all you other parents) this is what my parents have done for me that  believed has helped me immensely.
 
Teach by example
 A huge part of having a hearing loss is learning to be an advocate for yourself. When I was younger (toddler age to early elementary) I was painfully shy. I never felt comfortable explaining my hearing loss or my needs to people. My mom, on the other hand, was always fiercely determined to make sure I was given equal access to everything we did in school and elsewhere. She would always explain my needs and equipment to all of my teachers, from the very day I started wearing hearing aids. While I wouldn't say a word, my mom would always make sure I was there when she had this conversation. She'd tell me that she wouldn't always be there to advocate for me, and that if I didn't make my need important, no one else would either. I listened closely to what she would say and how she would explain things, and now, when I am explaining my hearing loss to people I use a very similar dialogue that I'd heard my mom give my teachers year after year.
 
Don't lower your expectations or place restrictions
My parents have always told me that as long as I did my best, they would be happy with me. However, they did not have any lower expectations for me than my older (hearing) sister, and never really let me use my hearing loss as a crutch or excuse to not do well on something. (Unless, of course, it was due to me not hearing the information, which would bring me back to #1.)  They also never told me I couldn't do anything because I couldn't hear. For example, when I started middle school, we had to choose whether to do band, choir, or orchestra. I changed my mind three times (I can't imagine how different things would be if I had chosen choir!), but my hearing loss played a minimal factor in this decision. I was never once told by my mom, "Maybe you shouldn't take the violin-what if you can't hear it?" The same was true when I had to decide when to take a foreign language (starting in 7th grade or 9th grade) and what language to take. I chose to take French, purely because I liked the way it sounded. I was never told it might be better if I waited two years so I could take ASL instead.
 
Open the lines of communication
One thing my mom always told me was not to be afraid to tell her anything. Whether it be a broken FM, a teacher who wasn't quite doing what she was supposed to, or a kid who just didn't "get it", I knew I could talk to my mom about it. Not only that, I knew she would help the situation. One important, I must say, is that if your child comes to you and says that her FM has been broken for the past two weeks, don't yell at her for waiting so long to tell someone. I had teachers who did this, and I would always think they'd be mad at me, so I just wouldn't tell them at all. Instead, thank your child for telling you, while nicely encouraging her to tell you sooner the next time it happens.
 
Follow your child's lead
When I was about five, my mom asked me if I wanted to go to some program and meet other kids who were "like me" and also had a hearing loss. I cried and cried, saying that I wasn't different than anyone else and did not want to go. My mom never pushed the issue, and I was perfectly content with not being with other who had hearing loss for years. As I got older and into my teen years, I became more aware frustrated with certain issues that I felt like my hearing peers couldn't relate to. I began asking to go to conventions, camps, and programs for other teens with hearing loss. While these weren't always the most fun or interesting things for my mom to attend, she understood that I needed to interact with others who could relate to me hearing- wise- but only when the time was right for me.
 
I hope this helps some of y'all out there. I will also ask my mom if she has any advice that she'd like to share.
 
Thanks Mom, for all you've done over the years!

Not-So-Quick Update

Things are better!

I feel like this whole "this is great," then followed shortly by "this is terrible!" thing is getting old.. and it is. To use one of the most over-used and annoying metaphors, life is a roller coaster. And in high school that roller coaster seems to have a lot more dips and loops...

Here's the deal:

• I had a conference with my mom and some important people from the school/special ed on Thursday. I went in skeptical, and came out optimistic. By the end of the meeting, I felt that everyone understood exactly what my frustrations were, in addition to having plenty of ideas to remedy the situation. If everyone follows up on their words (and in a timely manner), my days in school will be much less stressful.
• The meeting must have really gotten the ball rolling. Today, for the first time EVER this year, we watched a movie that WAS CAPTIONED!  (I can hear the masses cheering and applauding at their computer screens...Yes, I was pretty darn excited too!)
• You may or may not have noticed that some of my posts have gone missing, more specifially ones that were related to school and went into great detail. I know these were some of the most interest-generating posts, and I have saved them as drafts, and may re-post them someday. These posts were not removed with the intent of hiding what I have struggled with, but because of something completely different. I have this really cool thing that allows me to see where my visitors are coming from (cities), in addition to what search words lead them to my page. I only got this because I was starting to get curious about my audience. However, upon looking at my "stats" from these past few days, I saw some things that made me feel very uncomfortable. Basically, this is a public blog, and anyone, (whether I want them to or not) can read it. I think I've said more than enough about this for you to  understand what I'm hinting at, but if you would like to be further updated or have further questions on the school situation, feel free to leave a comment (and an email) and I would be more than happy to discuss it...privately. (for now, anyway)
• Remember how I wrote about my stomach bothering me waaay back? Well it never went away, and was especially bad this past couple of days. I went to the doctor and he was suspicious of gallstones. This pain has definitely added to my stress-level, and I wanted to find out NOW if I was going to have to have (yet another) surgery. So, the next day I fasted and drank more water than I thought my poor bladder could ever hold for this test.

The Goods News: It's not gallstones, and everything on the ultrasound appeared normal.
The Bad News: I'm back to square one, with no idea of what the problem is. The doctor said further testing can be done, and it's possible it could be related to stress. We'll see...

• Here's my happy moment of the day: We had a French test yesterday. It was part written, part multiple choice, and part listening. I was absent the day before the test, but decided to take it anyway. Today, we got the grades back and got to look at the questions on the test that we missed. As we were nearing the end of going over it, someone raised their hand and asked "Did anyone make a 100 on this test?" The teacher proceeded to say that someone did, indeed, make a 100, but it's up to that person, and not to the teacher to share. At which point, someone who must have seen my test on my desk shouted out my name. Yeah, that person was me! I smiled and the whole class started cheering and clapping. I felt like a complete nerd, which I am, so I felt like a completely proud nerd.. C'mon.. how cool is it that the deaf girl makes the only hundred in the class on a French test?! 
• It's Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year. L'shana Tova to all of my fellow Jews :)