Can a Deaf Person Go to College and Still Understand Everyone?

I usually don’t pay too much attention to my dreams. I usually just think about them then get on with my day. Past experience has taught me that I can never again allow my dreams to have too much influence over me. I cannot obsess over my dreams like I used to. Yes, they are fun to study and learn about. Some of my dreams provide interesting insights. But I had a very painful experience and ended up hurting people just from getting all obsessed over my dreams! So, no more of that.

 

But the dream I had last night keeps really tugging at me. It brought back painful memories and made me once again question whether something I want to do is a good decision or not.

 

First, some background. I lost my hearing when I was 13. I caught spinal meningitis and that was how I became deaf. My hearing loss was gradual; it was several years until my hearing was completely gone. This was devastating for me. For 13 years of my life, I was immersed in the hearing world. I enjoyed listening to music and also singing my favorite songs. Heck, my sister and I wanted to start our own band! (I wrote song lyrics and we wanted to use the songs for our band.) I loved school and threw myself into the world of learning and participating in the classroom. I talked with my friends on the phone a lot and went to see movies. The only concert I ever saw was a Christian concert at my church. I loved watching TV shows, listening to the radio and did outdoor activities with my friends. Becoming deaf changed all of that and it made me depressed for a long time.

 

But becoming deaf changed my school environment too. Thankfully, there were ASL interpreters and accommodating teachers in junior high as well as high school. I went to schools with deaf students in a mainstream school. (My parents did not want me to attend a School for the Deaf because I was not allowed to talk.)

 

And that was great while it lasted. Seriously. Because of these accommodations, I thrived in school. I was on home study for the last two years of high school because I was in and out of the hospital so much having surgeries and I still graduated from high school with straight A’s.

 

College, however, was different. Yes, they had notetakers and ASL interpreters, as well as assisted listening devices (ALDs) to accommodate Deaf/HOH students, but I don’t think they had a good arrangement for this. There was no back-up if my notetaker was absent – and that happened a lot. On those days, I was left in the dark. I had no idea what the teacher or students were saying. I did wear a hearing aid at that time (my left ear was damaged in the car accident and so I could not wear two hearing aids) but that hearing aid only did so much. Unfortunately, my notetaker was absent on the day we watched a video in class, and when there was a quiz, some of the questions were about what was in the video. So what was in the video? I had no clue! I answered the questions the best I could but I ended up still getting it wrong. I made a note that my notetaker was absent that day so I didn’t know what the video talked about. Unfortunately, I still lost points on the quiz because of my wrong answers.

 

I was thinking about that a lot this morning, after I woke up from the dream. I never finished college. There was no more money so I couldn’t pay for it anymore. My mother was on the phone calling everyone and asking for help, but we couldn’t get any help. (She ended up cursing out someone on the phone because they refused to help!)

 

Now, at this point in my life, I have an uncertain future ahead of me. I know at least one thing, though: I want to go back to school. That is a sure thing. That is something I REALLY want to do. I am not very successful as a novelist or as an author of nonfiction books, so my writing career isn’t much of a “career” because it doesn’t provide a living. (I still write, though, because it’s my passion. And I have people who believe in me and my work and they publish my books. Mad love, guys!) I don’t know where I will end up career-wise, though I am unable to work right now anyway. Right now, I have to lay low. (I am using this time to write, help people out and hopefully soon to volunteer – if we ever figure things out communication-wise and pandemic-wise!) Honestly, I don’t even know if I CAN work a job out there somewhere in the world, because of my health. I take medications for my heart condition, cholesterol, allergies and headaches, but sometimes I still get chest pain, dizziness and headaches. So, I don’t know where I could fit in with a job. My health problems were a big issue at my last job!

 

But I do want to go back to school. Finishing college is important to me. I really want to get a degree. I know, a lot of people say “oh, you don’t really need a college degree to do stuff” or “college is a waste of time.” I don’t think college is a waste of time, though. And I’m not trying to get a college degree just so I could do stuff. I was still able to do stuff WITHOUT a college degree! I wrote for a newspaper and got a good job! It’s just the point of getting the degree that matters.

 

Even so, I worry that when I go back to college, I will run into the same problems I had at the college I went to in California.

 

In my dream last night, I was in college and taking a math class. Unfortunately, I did not have a notetaker or an ASL interpreter. I had no one helping me out to understand what the teacher was saying. I had no ALDs to help me out, either. These days, I don’t wear a hearing aid. I am PROFOUNDLY deaf. “Deaf as a post.” I don’t hear anything. I would be in the dark in a class if I went back to college and had no notetaker or interpreter to tell me what people were saying.

 

At the end of the dream, I was so frustrated by constantly falling behind, not knowing what we were supposed to be doing and not understanding how to solve the math problems that I ended up dropping the class. I figured I would rather drop the class than get an “F” for it.

 

And that is a big concern for me. As much as I want to go back to school, I worry that I won’t have any accommodations at all for understanding what everybody is saying.

 

This is why I prefer online learning. I have taken online courses before, and while watching all those videos was insanely boring, at least they were closed-captioned! At least I knew what everybody was saying!

 

But if I go back to college, chances are pretty good the classes I take won’t be online. Yes, we still have the pandemic going on, but a lot of schools are having students on campus for in-person learning. So I would probably have to be in a class. I have no idea what sort of accommodations they have for deaf students yet there is a pervading dread that despite these accommodations, I will still fall behind! The college I went to before failed me as a Deaf student; the next college might fail me too. It's not like I can afford to go to college right now, anyway, because there's no funding for it.

 

But if there is a way for me to go to school and be able to understand everything in the classroom – including videos that everybody has to watch – then I would like to have that opportunity. It might happen before I get the cochlear implant or after I get the implant. Either way, it’s a goal I have. Despite my limitations in communicating with the hearing world, it’s a goal I hold onto. Someday, I hope it will be a reality.