stupid freshmen

So we've all heard stories about Gallaudet freshmen. Most often discussed (to me) is that they are known for pulling false fire alarms at all hours of the night. This has been happening for YEARS. The freshmen classes are renown for that. There are signs posted next to each alarm warning suspension or expulsion from school for pulling a false fire alarm now. I wonder if the alarms bother hearing or deaf kids more... either way, you're woken up in the middle of the night and have to evacuate. Sucks if you got 8am class.

I've been told that these freshmen also know how to party. Or think they do? Getting drunk every night, party party party, making out, sleeping around, what do I know. I just hear stories, and the scene is definitely too cool for me.

Once (or twice?) a year, the freshmen also will dye their hair (men and women) and then shave it off (men and women). But everybody's doin' it, Mom!

I'm not exactly sure why. Why the alarms, the parties, the shaved heads- and probably many more things out of the ordinary that I am not allowed to know about (as a hearing kid, living off campus, graduate student?). I've asked around for others' opinions on the subject. What they tel me is that every year, the freshman class tries to "outdo" the previous class. Get more strikes against them, have badder parties, be more crazy, more often.

Apparently both last year and this year, someone smeared FECES on the buttons in one of the elevators in the dorm. SERIOUSLY? I think you all can guess my opinion here. What do you all think? Funny or freaky?

But why? Why is this so important to be more off-the-wall? What my buddies come up with is that this is the way freshmen rebel. I suppose they are rebelling against what society has expected of them, pressured them to become, forced them to stay out of, or grown to antagonize. And ya know what, I totally respect that. Kids get a chance to move out of their parents home, find other buddies that are just like them, who have similar experiences, similar habits, who understand them better than their own families. Of course they want to experiment with limits and boundaries, with obligations and labels. With sexuality and debauchery. But POO in the ELEVATOR? Really? Shit? From your ass? Is that worth it?

Honestly, I think that if you want to change how you look or act to be different than everyone else for the sake of finding your identity, totally cool with me. Do what you gotta do. BUT, if you go so far, and plan, and execute, a shitty idea that is so disrespectful to others??! FUCK YOU, I say. And I'm not the one who has to live in your dorm, use your elevator, clean up your shit. I can't imagine how they feel. Some prolly cheer for you, but others prolly hate you. Idiot.

Another buddy brought up a REALLY good point. A LOTTTT of Gallaudet students get a sweet financial aid package. And they depend on that to even go to classes. And the truth is, when something is handed to you for free, you treat it a lot differently than if you were paying for it. You'd want to get your money's worth. You would have more respect for the goods you paid for. You earned that cash and now you decided this route- you better take advantage of each day and not miss a class unless you are bleeding! Heh. So maybe they might not value the situation they are so generously placed into? They decide to go on to an institution of higher learning. Some will take the offer with open arms and enjoy it and graduate and LEARN something. Some will decide to go on because someone else told them they have to, to go get laid, to go get drunk, enjoy it and maybe graduate. Hmm. Curious. What do you think?

expressing yourself

I haven't really had the motivation to write in the blog recently. And tonight I am kind of forcing it out of myself, but here goes.

It is hard enough to express myself in English. Can you imagine me trying to get it out in another language? No way, man. O, so you think I'm funny? Somehow your sense of humor is lost cross-language. And I can imagine this to be true. Humor can be quite a complex concept. And often time linguistically complex, too. I just don't seem to be that funny in ASL. Comes out wrong... boo

Also, it can be tough to express your intelligence. Think about it. I've been "learning" ASL for about 3 years? 4 years? Imagine a 3 or 4 year old. You think they are funny?? haha. You think they can express how smart a 23 year old is using their 4 year old language?

Of course this is all a stretch. In the end, my point is that I need to study more. My personality doesn't really shine in my sign. I need to work on that. Expression. No good, man. I think, at least, that I am maintaining my signing skills... not losing too much.

I think I depend too much on English, really. I need to just get that outta my thoughts and think in ASL! Think VISUAL!

so much potential

he is so amazing. my one true love. everything I've ever wanted. extremely intelligent, self-aware, well-read, handsome, creative, curious, brave, loves the earth and hates the MAN.

there is so much potential. I want to scream to everyone how fantastic he is. show him off to the world! he's all that I could have ever asked for. right? we're almost to bliss, but he is holding himself back. from success.. ? holding us back?

Come see a documentary

http://www.seewhatimsayingmovie.com/screenings.html

http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/2010/v7i2/idff10.aspx

as I King Jordan said.. Deaf people can do anything but hear

Communication solves world problems?

This is similar to a post from December... but whatever.

Some say that money is the root of all evil. Some say that people are innately good.
Either way, I believe without a doubt that all problems in the world are due to
miscommunication. In some way or another, all wars, battles, arguments, and
judgments are based on some levels of man not understanding, or not trying to
understand, fellow man. Studying speech-language pathology (or "communication
therapy") has taught me a simple part of language that can have huge altercations-
Taking the listener's perspective. If we all could learn a little more about our
audiences, about the rationale of who that person/group of people is/are, the
world would be a better place. I am pursuing this field in hopes to one day, bridge
the gap between hearing and Deaf culture (which is wildly more fascinated and
alienated than I had ever realized).

and we're back

Now that I have had a week break, I think I am back in a good mood. I've been sleeping about 9 hours a night and I am enjoying a life without SOAPs or lesson plans or children :-)

AND I've found a gold mine of cool ASL articles in the Sign Language Studies that Gallaudet publishes. Right now I am reading "Language and Literacy Acquisition through Parental Mediation in American Sign Language" (2009), but there are plenty more where that came from. [Email me if you want a copy... don't tell anyone where you got it!]

I was just thinking about how it can be a challenge to keep up with a conversation in a group of Deaf people. I mean, the conversation jumps so fast [::eyes move like you're watching a tennis match::]. It can be quite difficult to catch it all, and therefore difficult to stay in the conversation. I miss signs all the time (on top of the fact that I don't know all the signs), and it doesn't take much for me to get lost. And then today I found "Signs in Which Handshape and Hand Orientation Are Either Not Visible or Are Only Partially Visible: What Is the Consequence for Lexical Recognition?" (2009). Basically they found that handshape has the most salient information for comprehension of the message. Whoa, how awesome?

And I also saw, "Are You Getting the Message?: The Effects of SimCom on the Message Received by Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing Students" (2010). It basically found that SimCom does not produce equivalent messages to hearing and deaf students (as we knew), and that students do not receive equivalent messages (good to know).

I any event, I want all these articles to be in a book that I can read on the metro. Not me printing out 8.5x11 copies of everything. yuck. I need a kindle??

And in my career-oriented-confusion, true these things excite me and educate me, but they don't encourage me (not yet) to join the forces. While I think these studies are awesome and they are answering some truly curious questions, I really don't think I would want to pilot such a study. I am content on reading them.

Now if someone would just do a study about the hearing students' experiences at Gallaudet, I'd be satisfied. Though they do have published works regarding the Deaf President Now stuff. I'll read that too and let you know if it might be similar...

CODAfied

Why are CODAs among the most fascinating? Man, I swear... bizarre...

A few beers later, and it's still so captivating. I'll try to convey this to you. It could be a blog post or a master's thesis... I could go on and on... here goes

CODA- child of Deaf adults (KODA = kid... ie, young person specifically...)

Anyway, here goes... and enough with the ellipses, huh?

In general, we need to first address bilingualism. KODAs are hypothetically learning both spoken English and signed American Sign Language (at least in this country). and of course, this depends on their exposure. But they are no ordinary bilingual. KODAs are learning two languages of two MODES of communication. WHAT?! Us hearing folk, when we want to learn ASL, it's a fascinating other language, foreign, yet domestic. Ok, gotta get the handshape, palm orientation, and body placement under my belt, but then, I'm good. The other way around, though, can be quite a challenge. Can you imagine if all your life you only used your hands stuck in mittens, and then you needed the fine motor skills to type a weblog entry fluently? I mean, a lot of people (KODAs or Deaf) will use a manual mode of communication as a primary mode of communication. Trying to learn a spoken language is beyond learning the language itself.

Semantics is only one piece of the puzzle. The English phonology is a whole different MODE than the ASL. For this reason, it may be a challenge to learn to speak English as a KODA. A soon-to-be-graduate in the speech-language pathology program at Gallaudet presented recently a case study about a CODA she worked with in the clinic. And it's true, she confirmed it for me, that children of Deaf adults are fascinating. Hearing kids of hearing parents-- some background for you, put very simply-- learn to speak by practicing different sounds. They babble up a storm, and they listen to themselves. They listen to their parents. Over time, they try to match their productions to their models (e.g., family, teachers, peers?, TV, etc...). Oral motor skills are acquired just as any fine motor skill... through practice... and eventual mastery.

Speech samples revealed that he would produce very inconsistent errors. Sometimes he would say a word this way, sometimes a different way... and rarely the correct way. The presenters example was with the word train. Instead, the KODA said "crane" or "wayne"... [I actually don't remember her examples. I made these up]. Now there are a lot of reasons for inconsistent errors. And the bottom line is that he is still learning how to produce it correctly. He makes his best attempt, and he waits for the ever-so-valuable feedback from the therapist to let him know if that sounded right or not.

Let me take a step back. Before any one learns how to produce speech, it's best to listen to how it's supposed to be produced. The presenter also pointed out some curious errors that may be representative of his ability to discriminate between English speech sounds. And ya know, that is a skill itself. Training your ear to hear the difference between sounds seems passive and natural, but in fact, it should be noted that this comes with work (and exposure!). And for some KODAs, this can also be a challenge. For this kid, he had difficulty understanding the name Colt. He responded "cold?" "No, ColTTTT." "Cold??" he replies, signing the COLD gloss simultaneously. And it's true, that /t/ and /d/ are acoustically similar. And it can be difficult to hear the difference. Just as it can be difficult for a Japanese speaker to discriminate between the English /r/ and /l/ (I've done some research. Ask me for references ;-).

Now moving from speech to language (they are not one and the same)- The KODA she presented on initially would just repeat what he heard. Practicing the model? Once they weaned him off of that, he would consistently produce 1-word utterances. This boy was about 3 years old, so he is expected to produce about 3-word utterances at that time (as other hearing kids typically do). Why, as speech and language therapy continued, was he still at 1-word utterances? One idea is rooted in ASL morphology. In ASL, true there are sign glosses (as they are called) which are kinda comparable to words. You put them together, and built meaning. True. But there is a lot more than that. Often, ASL includes such movements of the hands and body and face that are not exactly a sign themselves. So maybe this child is having trouble with this 1 word:1 morpheme idea? He frequently omitted what may be called "function words" like prepositions (e.g., in) and articles (e.g., the)... And there are no 1:1 corresponding ASL glosses for such English words.

So in the end. KODAs blow my mind. They learn two languages at once- aka simultaneous bilingualism. On the other hand, this really depends on the kid. It could be argued that some are sequential bilinguals (learning one language, then learning the other). Either way, they are fine tuning their oral motor skills and their audition skills. The two languages are different modes, and really, they don't follow the typical simultaneous bilingual patterns other children have who are learning two languages within the same mode (spoken). Intriguing. And don't get me wrong! A LOTTTT of KODAs get English down with no problems! The key is really exposure (and interaction). How can you expect to learn a language when you never encounter it?

I don't know what my real point is, but I want to just point out how complicated and awesome this is. Or sometimes is? sigh..