O*I*C
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I just started reading this forum a few days ago and love it here already.
I was born hard of hearing but not diagnosed until I was 13 because I learned to lip read as a toddler thanks to my Mother who loved to sit on the couch and read to my siblings and I when we were younger. Everyone thought I was shy and a dreamer when really I just didn't hear them or couldn't understand new people as well.
I went to a mainstream school but no accomodations were made for me even though they knew about my hearing loss. If we were seated in alphabetic order and I ended up in the back row because of my last name then tough, that was where I was stuck sitting. Ha! My grades obviously went down in highschool :P
Nobody else within my family or circle of friends has a hearing loss, but this never bothered me until lately. I started college after a few years break from school and dropped out after one semester. The school made no accomodations even though being older now I knew to ask for them and did repeated. I felt very alone and isolated, I couldn't really talk to any of the other students well or hear the lessons. I got good grades, but it took hours of independent study after school and the constant lip reading in class exhausted me until all I wanted to do was sleep.
Since dropping out I don't even wear my hearing aids now, I found out how little they really help me. My husband and I started ASL classes two weeks ago and after last weeks class I came home and went into my bedroom and cried and cried. I wasn't sad, I was so happy. For the first time since I could remember I could "hear" what someone was saying to me easily and the very first time without asking them to repeat themselves. Even though the phrases were the simple beginner signs like "you name you?" and "I student. You student you?" they still made me so happy to be able to understand them without any problems.
I am a little sad though, because in a few weeks the classes will be on a break for Summer and I don't want to stop learning, but I'm so happy my husband is learning ASL with me and I'll be able to communicate with him without either of us getting frustrated all the time.
Ah... sorry for the book LOL! So anyways, Hi!
I was born hard of hearing but not diagnosed until I was 13 because I learned to lip read as a toddler thanks to my Mother who loved to sit on the couch and read to my siblings and I when we were younger. Everyone thought I was shy and a dreamer when really I just didn't hear them or couldn't understand new people as well.
I went to a mainstream school but no accomodations were made for me even though they knew about my hearing loss. If we were seated in alphabetic order and I ended up in the back row because of my last name then tough, that was where I was stuck sitting. Ha! My grades obviously went down in highschool :P
Nobody else within my family or circle of friends has a hearing loss, but this never bothered me until lately. I started college after a few years break from school and dropped out after one semester. The school made no accomodations even though being older now I knew to ask for them and did repeated. I felt very alone and isolated, I couldn't really talk to any of the other students well or hear the lessons. I got good grades, but it took hours of independent study after school and the constant lip reading in class exhausted me until all I wanted to do was sleep.
Since dropping out I don't even wear my hearing aids now, I found out how little they really help me. My husband and I started ASL classes two weeks ago and after last weeks class I came home and went into my bedroom and cried and cried. I wasn't sad, I was so happy. For the first time since I could remember I could "hear" what someone was saying to me easily and the very first time without asking them to repeat themselves. Even though the phrases were the simple beginner signs like "you name you?" and "I student. You student you?" they still made me so happy to be able to understand them without any problems.
I am a little sad though, because in a few weeks the classes will be on a break for Summer and I don't want to stop learning, but I'm so happy my husband is learning ASL with me and I'll be able to communicate with him without either of us getting frustrated all the time.
Ah... sorry for the book LOL! So anyways, Hi!
to AllDeaf forum. I went through the same thing when I was in mainstream elementary and mainstream high school in the oral-only program but I was not alone as I have deaf classmates back then. That was in the 1954 to 1966. When I was in 10th to 12th grades, I had a very difficult time trying to understand what the teachers and hearing students saying in the hearing classrooms. It was a struggle with no accommodations. I have never like oral-only program at all. I was jealous of my hearing sister getting all the good grades of A+ in all of her classes. I got some F to D- or D+. But still I graduated from high school. What a bummer. :roll:
Come over and introduce yourself next class! I'm trying to place you, you had on a white shirt last class? Wavy hair and sat with a group by the on the side where the windows are?