Deaf Mixer

Here come some few posts about my new situation here in the DC metro area! I have some notes about the interesting stuff from Graduate Student Orientation last week- we were given a bunch of presentations geared towards ignorant and then not-so-ignorant audiences. But first, some fun happened here last night, and I would love to share!

I am now living in MD with two Deafies and another Hearing girl. (If Deaf is a culture and should therefore be capitalized, then why not Hearing? ...when referred to as such) This weekend we have a full house with two boyfriends visiting from home. On top of that, one of my roommates' buddy from Gallaudet came for dinner along with three others. The food was fantastic! In any event, 4 Hearing kids (2 with ASL knowledge) + 6 Deaf kids = good time. And Kevin proved ever so impressive when he tried his best to communicate with his hands as best he could.

I'm gonna say that the home court advantage definitely helped me open up. Within the first hour of chatting, I learned that the professor I will be working with was actually someone's speech therapist! What a small world. Smaller than the Jewish world, I bet. ;-) Everyone was nice, though it proved to be pretty awkward at first. You could see us falling into our deaf and hearing cliques quickly. Eventually (with help from the brews and foosball) there was some intermingling. We attempted a round of Apples to Apples (with my poor interpreting), but that fell apart before long.

Something that stood out between the two hearing statuses in the room- our relation to the television. It was on most of the time- low volume with closed captions on. It seemed that two of the hearing kids were consistently distracted by it, while the signers didn't really think twice about its presence. It was brought up, and it seems to be a trend that hearing people are just easily distracted by a TV on in the background, while the signers are aware of it, but do not need to look at it if they aren't interested. The hearing sense is so weird. We talked a lot this week at orientation about the sense and what it means to hearing people- how it impacts our lives and culture, even in ways that we are unaware of. It's a powerful sense, I say. And it's almost passive. (I say "almost" because there is definitely a distinction between hearing and listening). You don't need to point your ears at anything or need to be too close to anything to hear it. Sound just finds it's way into your outer, middle, and inner ear and right to your brain. So weird. And awesome.

Hopefully I will be at loads of social deaf events, and my signing and awareness will only increase. The kids offered good advice to keep in touch with the Deaf community around here, and I will do my best to network on campus and find more buddies to increase my competency and coolness 8-).