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I'm not alone, Jackie Smiley, Sandusky, Ohio, junior has felt frustrated with her classmates.
"Sometimes other students start talking to me," she says, "not knowing I'm deaf, and when they find out, they just stop."
That's happened to me, many times. Now, rather than trying to salvage the conversation, I just shrug and let it go. After 23 years of struggling, it's become a habit to not try.
But, optimistic by nature, I frequently find myself making eye contact and hoping someone will make that first step. If they would just try, I'd meet them halfway, and then some. I wish people wouldn't leave it up to me to make the first step. I'm an extrovert, but it's too scary to take that first step every time with every new person.
"Don't assume that sole responsibility of communication lies with the deaf person," Bates says. The ASL sign for communication, she says, implies a two-way process.
It's my third semester at Gallauer and I'm unhappy. The polluted air of Washington, D.C., is making me sick, and a year after 9/11, snipers are terrorizing the city. Why did I leave nice, quiet Kansas, I grumble. But there's no deaf college there, so I stay.
I'm also dissatisfied with things on campus. Because the Deal-World is so small, and Gallaudet even smaller, gossip and rumors spread like wildfire, and can be vicious. Isolated all my life, I'm not used to dealing with gossip, and I don't handle it well.
What's more, I often feel like I'm judged for my background, not my merits. I'm still considered too hearing-minded — I cling to some "hearing-world" values and haven't adopted some Deaf-World ones. For example, hearing people tend to value educational achievement more, while Deaf students value leadership and athletic talent. Many deaf students struggle in academics, but experts disagree as to why. In athletics and leadership, the field is evened out between deaf and hearing, and academics don't matter.
I don't get to decide. My body does, I get sick, and I go home a week before finals. But I will come back, I tell myself, and I will find my place.
As I walk down the hill to my car, I check my pager for e-mails. My Sidekick is to me what cell phones are to hearing people, and then some. I use it for e-mails, AOL Instant Messenger and text messages. It costs a lot more than a cell phone, but it's the only way people can contact me.
When I excel in school, I'm accused of showing off and thinking I'm better than everyone. So I flounder, confused about where I belong. Do I belong in the hearing world, after all? Should I stay, or should I leave?
I get an e-mail from my mother. She wants me to call her. She can't call me because I don't have a strobe light to alert me when the phone rings. It's too expensive.
So, when I get home, I turn on the TV, pull up a chair and dial the Video Relay Service. When the interpreter appears on-screen, I look into the webcam and sign to her, giving her my mother's phone number. When my mother answers, the conversation flows back and forth through the interpreter.
We talk about the story I'm working on. I tell her how I'm struggling with how to explain what it's like being a deaf person in a hearing world. She's
very supportive, helping me to keep going when I want to give up. But it wasn't always this way.
We're in the kitchen, screaming at each other. I want to go back to Gallaudet, but my mother has put her foot down.
"You're not going back there!" she yells with her hands and voice. "You'll decide to cut us off because we're hearing, not dead."
"That's not true!"
"I'm not stupid. I know the Deaf-World doesn't like hearing people. They'll steal you away and make you hate us!" She is crying now.
I glare at her, furious that she's making me choose between my family and the Deaf-World. It's my fault. I didn't reply to my parents' e-mails at Gallaudet—was too absorbed in my life there. But she blames the Deaf-World, not me. It’s little consolation that she sees it as a culture, not a aroun of disabled people.
Even as I transfer to KU, the battles continue. I still have friends at Gallaudet, whom I sometimes visit, and often talk to on AIM. Mom doesn't like this, and makes her feelings clear, afraid of losing me.
I'm not alone in feeling divided between family and deaf peers.Many deaf people with hearing parents go through this.
"My family wants me to be more hearing," Smiley says. "And my friends want me to be more deaf." She often feels stuck between the two, she says.
Deaf people don't just struggle with divided loyalties, but also with low expectations that make it difficult to succeed in school.
The hearing world often doesn't expect much of deaf children. At the time I was born, doctors often gave little hope to parents of deaf children. Doctors told my parents I wouldn't be able to read past a third-grade level.
When Ryan Schwarzenberger, Overland Park junior, was diagnosed, his doctor told his parents he wouldn't read past a sixth-grade level. And they shouldn't plan on him going to college, the doctor said.
Because of this, I grew up with tremendous pressure to prove experts wrong. My parents pressured me to get all As, take honors classes, do well on the SATs, go to college, reminding me that I had to prove to hearing people that I wasn't stupid because I was deaf.
It's a common experience for deaf people: to meet teachers who think deaf students can't do the work. I've met my share, teachers who weren't sure I could manage Advanced Placement courses or take a foreign language, until I proved them wrong. Other deaf students have been through this, too. Schwarzenberger had a middle school teacher who wasn't sure of his abilities.
Smiley also faced skepticism when she wanted to take honors classes in high school. Teachers didn't want to let her take advanced classes or Spanish.
"She said, I'll try my best to be sure you can do this." *Schwarzenberger* remembers.
"What does hearing have to do with what you know?" she says with exasperation.
I've been at KU for a year. I miss Gallauet, but KU has strong English and journalism programs, unlike Gallauet.
So, I choose education — and family — over the Deaf-World. My mother and I stop arguing so much and
JARED GAB
rebuild our relationship.
But a gap develops between me and the others in the Deaf-World. I'm called a traitor, a weakling, a sell-out for leaving Gallaudet. I'm accused of bad-mouthing the school when I say I get a better education at KU. When I tell people I’m lonely here and I miss being around Deaf people, they tell me it’s my fault because “gave up” on Gallaudet and deserted the Deaf-World.
I'm torn, it isn't fair that my choices are so limited. Hearing people have hundreds of colleges to choose from, but I don't. I have to choose between the Deaf-World and the college that best fits me... or at least the parts of me that aren't Deaf. But I've made my choice, and I stick with it.
I have good days and bad days. On the bad days, I watch people talk and wonder what they say. I love people and love talking with them, but I don't know how to talk to hearing people. Often, I want to cry with frustration because I don't know how to strip away the barriers created by my deafness, and ones I've built up myself.
Tara Schupner, Lenexa senior, talks with other deaf students at the Underground. Schupner, who is deaf, says she often feels torn between two worlds — the Deaf-World and the hearing world.
On good days, I'm optimistic that it'll all turn out fine, somehow. I have lots of support from family and friends who understand my struggle and remind me that deafness is not a disability, but a culture — something I often forget because I live in a world that sees me as disabled.
I'm hopeful that, someday, I will find my balance between the two worlds.
I graduate next week. Where I go from there, I don't know. I want to return to the Deaf-World and find my niche, but I don't want to leave the hearing world. My family and career are in the hearing world. I have hope, because others have straddled the gap and got the best out of each. Finding that balance probably will be a life-long process, but I have faith that it will happen.
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