Deaf Girl Raised to be Hearing

Dramatic Angel

Dramatic Angel

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Hi everyone! :wave: I'm a 17-year-old girl from Tennessee, and I have a severe bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. I was raised to speak, and I wear two hearing aids. I'm so glad that I am finally learning ASL at my school. I'm a senior, and I started learning sign language when I was a sophomore. Now I am on ASL level 3. I have a deep desire to be fluent one day so that I can be a Deaf Education teacher for reading, writing, and signing poetry.

I recently had this idea to create YouTube videos to teach people how to sign. So far, I've only made one video. Do you think I should continue? Thanks for your thoughts!

Video link: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu_TH8QwCsQ[/ame]
 
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Hi!!! :) I'm not familiar with the term, "bilateral sensorineural hearing loss".... I'm not even sure what exactly that is... Is that an advance termology for "deaf"? :) Just wondering. In the deaf community, we simply call ourselves either deaf person or.. hard of hearing person.... I've never met someone who introduced themselves as a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss person.... I wonder if that is different from a person who is ... deaf or... hard of hearing, is it? I would love to know! :) I'm profoundly deaf but grew up wearing hearing aids then got CI when I was 21. When you said you were raised to be hearing .. is that a negative way? like.. does your parents still want you to be hearing or are you realizing that you want to be part of the deaf community or to just be.. yourself? ASL is a beautiful language and I am so HAPPY that you're taking an interest in it. My huge suggestion for you is to make friends who speaks ASL... you will pick up a whole LOT faster if you hang out w/ people that does ASL instead of classes. trust me on this one. if only you live closeby.. :) best of luck!
 
I like the video but I'm wondering, what's the sign for "Want to go out sometime?"
 
Moelza said:
Hi!!! :) I'm not familiar with the term, "bilateral sensorineural hearing loss".... I'm not even sure what exactly that is... Is that an advance termology for "deaf"? :) Just wondering. In the deaf community, we simply call ourselves either deaf person or.. hard of hearing person.... I've never met someone who introduced themselves as a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss person.... I wonder if that is different from a person who is ... deaf or... hard of hearing, is it? I would love to know! :) I'm profoundly deaf but grew up wearing hearing aids then got CI when I was 21. When you said you were raised to be hearing .. is that a negative way? like.. does your parents still want you to be hearing or are you realizing that you want to be part of the deaf community or to just be.. yourself? ASL is a beautiful language and I am so HAPPY that you're taking an interest in it. My huge suggestion for you is to make friends who speaks ASL... you will pick up a whole LOT faster if you hang out w/ people that does ASL instead of classes. trust me on this one. if only you live closeby.. :) best of luck!
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Yeah, I can understand. It's a doctor's term, and I usually just call myself Deaf or hard-of-hearing, depending on which world I'm in. It's complicated. I'm not sure who I am, exactly. I think I'm hard-of-hearing since I can speak, but I yearn to be Deaf. When I say I was raised to be hearing, yes, it is slightly negative, because I am mainstreamed in a hearing school and have trouble communicating and making friends with others. I thought to myself that if my parents took the opportunity to learn how to sign and sent me to a school for the deaf, I would be better off in friendship. I have like no friends whatsoever. I want to be a part of the Deaf Community so bad! :)
 
Moelza said:
Hi!!! :) I'm not familiar with the term, "bilateral sensorineural hearing loss".... I'm not even sure what exactly that is... Is that an advance termology for "deaf"? :) Just wondering. In the deaf community, we simply call ourselves either deaf person or.. hard of hearing person.... I've never met someone who introduced themselves as a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss person.... I wonder if that is different from a person who is ... deaf or... hard of hearing, is it? I would love to know! :) I'm profoundly deaf but grew up wearing hearing aids then got CI when I was 21. When you said you were raised to be hearing .. is that a negative way? like.. does your parents still want you to be hearing or are you realizing that you want to be part of the deaf community or to just be.. yourself? ASL is a beautiful language and I am so HAPPY that you're taking an interest in it. My huge suggestion for you is to make friends who speaks ASL... you will pick up a whole LOT faster if you hang out w/ people that does ASL instead of classes. trust me on this one. if only you live closeby.. :) best of luck!
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"bilateral mean hearing lost in both ears
 
honestly I would say there are plenty of videos out by native and fluent ASL signers that yours are not needed, but if its what you want to do, don't let anyone stop you. My biggest suggestion is go to college and pick a college with a large Deaf population. You will soon have more friends than you know what to do with, you are probably seeing a whole new world open up to you conceptually as you internalize ASL more and more. You will probably become Bi-cultural in both the Deaf and Hearing worlds. These are things I learned in college and from many people I knew who grew up Oral like yourself. You sound like an Audist success story, yet if I look at the whole person and not just focus on a person with hearing loss who was able to learn to speak well and lipread in order to pretend to be "Normal" I see a whole person who is half empty, has no friends to speak of and struggles to understand others when they talk as well as be understood.
This is no in anyway an attack on you. In fact I would love to befriend you. Rather by simply pointing out my observations of your posting and adding what i know from experience, I can tell you that you will find a wonderful life if you see out the Deaf community and make an effort to become part of it..
Good luck to you. Be sure to ask for college recommendations. Personally I went to CSUN (Cal State Northridge) But there are several other colleges around that have a good number of Deaf folks attending. even with community college. really its about finding areas with a good sized Deaf population...
 
A Nihilist said:
I like the video but I'm wondering, what's the sign for "Want to go out sometime?"
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Dramatic Angel said:
That would be the equivalent of "WANT DATE ONE DAY?" :giggle: You can always look up the signs on signingsavvy.com or aslpro.com :D
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Awww adorably innocent or witty on your behalf, I can't tell....

soutthpaw said:
honestly I would say there are plenty of videos out by native and fluent ASL signers that yours are not needed, but if its what you want to do, don't let anyone stop you.
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I agree - there's a LOT out there. But by chance yours could be the one most people want to reference. It's worth a try. If nothing else you may gain a little following and find some cool people who like your series. My friend is a makeup artist who follows people on youtube for their tutorials. I think it's the same thing - theres a TON of them out there, however sometimes people prefer a specific personality.

That being said, your introduction is such that you'd need a knowledge of ASL to understand what you're going to cover! Consider hard captioning your introduction so that people who NEED the ABCs can get through your introduction to get to the beginner stuff. If you're assuming your audience needs the ABCs then you can likely assume they don't understand your introduction.

Anyways, welcome to AD!
 
soutthpaw said:
honestly I would say there are plenty of videos out by native and fluent ASL signers that yours are not needed, but if its what you want to do, don't let anyone stop you. My biggest suggestion is go to college and pick a college with a large Deaf population. You will soon have more friends than you know what to do with, you are probably seeing a whole new world open up to you conceptually as you internalize ASL more and more. You will probably become Bi-cultural in both the Deaf and Hearing worlds. These are things I learned in college and from many people I knew who grew up Oral like yourself. You sound like an Audist success story, yet if I look at the whole person and not just focus on a person with hearing loss who was able to learn to speak well and lipread in order to pretend to be "Normal" I see a whole person who is half empty, has no friends to speak of and struggles to understand others when they talk as well as be understood.
This is no in anyway an attack on you. In fact I would love to befriend you. Rather by simply pointing out my observations of your posting and adding what i know from experience, I can tell you that you will find a wonderful life if you see out the Deaf community and make an effort to become part of it..
Good luck to you. Be sure to ask for college recommendations. Personally I went to CSUN (Cal State Northridge) But there are several other colleges around that have a good number of Deaf folks attending. even with community college. really its about finding areas with a good sized Deaf population...
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Thank you so much! :ty: My top pick for a college I want to go to is in Rochester, New York. It's called Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.) and there's a Deaf school called National Technological Institute for the Deaf (N.T.I.D.) on campus. There are nine colleges on that one campus. I went to a camp there this summer called Explore Your Future (E.Y.F.) and wow, there was so much signing going on! I did make friends with the teenagers there and exchanged phone numbers. In fact, I was rather popular and had a large group of friends in the EYF program. :D I'm actually mainly making the videos for a hearing guy who found me on a social networking site, saying he had always wanted to learn ASL.
 
ChristineNeely said:
Awww adorably innocent or witty on your behalf, I can't tell....



I agree - there's a LOT out there. But by chance yours could be the one most people want to reference. It's worth a try. If nothing else you may gain a little following and find some cool people who like your series. My friend is a makeup artist who follows people on youtube for their tutorials. I think it's the same thing - theres a TON of them out there, however sometimes people prefer a specific personality.

That being said, your introduction is such that you'd need a knowledge of ASL to understand what you're going to cover! Consider hard captioning your introduction so that people who NEED the ABCs can get through your introduction to get to the beginner stuff. If you're assuming your audience needs the ABCs then you can likely assume they don't understand your introduction.

Anyways, welcome to AD!
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Thank you for your input! I will definitely put closed captioning in. ^^
 
Dramatic Angel said:
Thank you so much! :ty: My top pick for a college I want to go to is in Rochester, New York. It's called Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.) and there's a Deaf school called National Technological Institute for the Deaf (N.T.I.D.) on campus. There are nine colleges on that one campus. I went to a camp there this summer called Explore Your Future (E.Y.F.) and wow, there was so much signing going on! I did make friends with the teenagers there and exchanged phone numbers. In fact, I was rather popular and had a large group of friends in the EYF program. :D I'm actually mainly making the videos for a hearing guy who found me on a social networking site, saying he had always wanted to learn ASL.
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You will love NTID/RIT! you will make so many friends so fast it will make your head spin. You are very pretty so you will have the guys and girls (depending on your preference) chasing after you. Consider joining the Deaf Sorority too..
Most of all when you arrive at NTID you will probably experience feeling "Normal" for the first time in your life. I know there are some members here that went to NTID.. As it is in the Deaf world we all know someone who when there. heehee..
 
Dramatic Angel said:
Thank you so much! :ty: My top pick for a college I want to go to is in Rochester, New York. It's called Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.) and there's a Deaf school called National Technological Institute for the Deaf (N.T.I.D.) on campus. There are nine colleges on that one campus. I went to a camp there this summer called Explore Your Future (E.Y.F.) and wow, there was so much signing going on! I did make friends with the teenagers there and exchanged phone numbers. In fact, I was rather popular and had a large group of friends in the EYF program. :D I'm actually mainly making the videos for a hearing guy who found me on a social networking site, saying he had always wanted to learn ASL.
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you will have a good time there - guaranteed.

I'll be at RIT in couple weeks just for the weekend cuz of Deafnation Expo. I'll be working there and also partying afterward :D
 
Video Has CC now.

Are you able to view the video with closed captions? I can on the computer, but on my iPad I can't.
 
I can see CC in the introduction but when you start spelling out the letters I get zero CCs.

I don't know if that was intentional or not but there you go!

Change of subject, if you want to do more videos it would be kind of cool if you did a sort of series on what it's like to be deaf in a hearing world. For example, you can talk about how you deal with going to the grocery store and buying stuff. Or applying for jobs or whatever. That would be kind of interesting and make you stand out compared to the millions of ASL tutorials that are already on youtube.

Good luck!
 
I don't know if I'm just in a pissy mood tonight or what. But I don't want to learn a language from someone who isn't fluent in it. Don't take this to mean that you shouldn't make your videos. I do think you should say something more like "learn ASL as I learn ASL!" so people understand how much experience you have with it. Your video also wouldn't play for me, even though I tried a bunch of others to make sure it wasn't a problem on my end.
 
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