Why Fight?
We live in an uncertain, impersonal world. Everyday, a deaf person has their rights violated. Day by day, I see people’s faith in the laws erode away. Day by day, I see more and more deaf people ask, “Why fight? It’s futile!”
Deaf people are not remembered by the hearing for their names but as that ‘deaf’ person. In high school, people knew my name, but it was easier for my fellow classmates to say, ‘Oh yeah, the smart deaf person!’ instead of my name.
It’s very common for hearing people to not know, or forget that the interpreter has to interpret everything they hear, so a deaf student in a mainstream setting can sit back and listen to what their classmates and teachers are saying about them. Far too often, we are the invisibles.
When I saw my classmate go, ‘Her – the smart deaf one,’ I made a promise to myself. I promised myself that wherever I went, people would remember me. Not as the ’smart deaf person’, or even as a deaf person, but by my name.
I am more than just a deaf person. Being deaf is just part of the puzzle that makes up me. When a violation of my rights happen, I fight. I’m not going to lie – I lose sometimes. But when I fight, I fight. Maybe I won’t make a difference for myself, but someday that fight will make a difference for someone else. And I’ll be remembered by my name, not as just ‘that deaf person’.
~ A Deaf Pundit/Jeannette Johnson
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt – “Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
Audiologists
I finally got into the university I applied to, and will start working on completing my degree in Public Administration this winter.
But as all we deaf know, when you get into a college or university, you have to provide an audiogram to prove that you are deaf so you can get accommodations. My audiogram was at least ten years old, so I went off to see an audiologist to get a new one.
The technology has definitely changed – it is far more high tech than what I remember. Instead of headphones, they had those ear inserts. Which is better, because there’s less chance a person will give a false signal due to misunderstanding between hearing it or feeling the vibration of the sound.
What struck me the most during the appointment was not the technological change, but how the audiologists dealt with me. Now, I’ve known this audiologist for a long time, but it had been so many years since I saw her, and this was the first appointment I had with her that I didn’t have an interpreter present. I didn’t have an interpreter because the appointment was a very last minute thing.
The audiologist was like, ‘Oh, we don’t have an interpreter? Shoot. We’ll have to write!’ I told her that we did, but since it was such a last minute appointment, not having an interpreter didn’t bother me. She turned me over to another audiologist who was going to give me the audiogram.
After the test was done, the first audiologist asked me about what I was doing now and I explained about being accepted at an university this winter. She then inquired, ‘You’ll have interpreters there, right?’
I told her that I was, and she was like, ‘Good!’ And that kinda took me aback. I hadn’t seen her for so long, and we’ve never really have had conversations like this. I’ve also known so many audiologists who look down at the deaf who use ASL, etc. But my audiologist wasn’t one of them. She was glad that I was going to have interpreters, because she knew I needed them, and that hearing aids and cochlear implants weren’t going to help.
With the audiologist that gave me the audiogram, we discussed my broken hearing aid (yes, I used to wear a hearing aid – but only to listen to music) she didn’t even try to convince me to get a digital hearing aid. She actually tried to convince me to fix the hearing aid. Then after I explained it was broken and over a decade old, she then said, ‘Ok. We can get you a very similar hearing aid then.’ No sales pitch or any form of spiel about how great this or that hearing aid was.
It’s nice to know that there are audiologists out there who are ethical, see the value of American Sign Language and aren’t looking to sell hearing aids/CIs to all of their clients!
Status of Me!
I’ve gotten a few emails and IMs wondering where the heck I’ve disappeared to.
I’m fine! I’m remodeling my bedroom, which is a lot of work. And well, lately I don’t have very much to say, and I don’t blog if I don’t have much to say. I want to keep the quality of my writings high. But rest assured, I am still around and reading the blogs!
Hopefully after the remodeling, I will be back and my digital pen will be blazing. 
See you guys around the blogosphere.
