Slso 1004 First Assignment

Grace Brennan

Professor Tajuddin

SLSO 1004

12 September 2017

         Growing up, I’ve had strangers ask me, “what’s your ethnicity?” I think it seems obvious when you look at me; my skin color is white so I’m therefore Caucasian. However, there are billions of Caucasians in this world who come from different ethnic backgrounds, not just from the U.S. The Italians, Irish, Germans, Czechoslovakians, Russians, Polish, and white Hispanic/Latino Americans are examples of these. Your skin color doesn’t determine your ethnicity, though. For example, Asians are not considered Caucasian, they’re originally from different parts of Asia; some are Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and so forth. I was born in the U.S. here in Pittsburgh, as well as both of my parents. We have lived in the U.S. our entire lives, and my parents have told me some of our family’s several nationalities. I had ancestors who arrived to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia, Russia, Italy, Ireland, and Greece. So, I discovered I’m a total of five different nationalities, mostly Italian and Irish with small percentages of Czech, Russian, and Greek.

         Aside from my nationality and family background, I have experienced situations in my life in which I felt like a stranger to a new surrounding. When I was in elementary school, classmates and students would constantly tease me for mishearing something or repeating back the wrong word in which I thought I heard correctly because of my hearing loss. It was easy for me to think of this as feeling like a  “stranger in a new surrounding” as that “new girl starting a new school” and not fitting in. Since I’ve started a new college this past August, I’ve found it difficult to explain my deafness to my new friends. I would usually say “Oh yeah, by the way I’m deaf. I might not hear you right away, but just tap me if you need my attention” or something along those lines. However, my short explanations don’t allow them to fully understand or grasp the complexity of my deafness. Yes, being deaf is very simple. You’re deaf, which means you basically can’t hear anything. But, when you are a Cochlear Implant user, like myself, this obscures the process of explaining to people that you’re deaf, but you can hear. Pretty contradictory right? Nevertheless, I wear two cochlear implants, which supposedly give me only 70% of average hearing. What fails to be stated in my explanations is my poor ability to understand people, even with cochlear implants. Side note if I’m losing you: I can speak and talk just like any normal hearing user, but I may not hear everything being said if it’s noisy or people are mumbling, or talking too fast. My cochlear implants, opposing to what some may think, are not like glasses. When I put them on, my ears don’t suddenly become “perfect” the way glasses clarify peoples’ vision.  I struggle to survive group conversations within noisy classroom settings, I won’t always catch a joke someone says to me in the cafeteria and the joke is lost after I say “What”, and I face false impressions by being labeled as shy or rude because I won’t always hear and respond to something. I’m tired of having people feel bad for me because I can’t always hear perfectly. Unfortunately, this is the pass I have been dealt with, and I will face many obstacles of being deaf for the rest of my life. It’s my actuality. But I’m certainly not going to dwell on, “Oh I can’t do this. Poor me.” A few years ago, someone I had just met told me, “being deaf must suck”. I’ll admit I was initially offended by her comment because honestly, no one had ever actually said that to me before. However, I simply told her, “No, it actually doesn’t” (mostly out of wanting to prove her wrong.) I listed some things that I could do that hearing people cannot, like sleep through a thunderstorm and turning off my cochlears to eliminate noise and distractions. I explain that not hearing perfectly doesn’t make me the person I am, it’s just a disability like anyone else acquires, such as losing their vision.