Allison's Notes:

As I hate to start off today's entry on the wrong foot, but my goal is to write in order of events that occurred.  So, the morning first, all the way up to the night, according to the schedule.  This morning the 6th Floor North was in a mess.  A lot of us woke up late, so we were rushing around getting ready.  To top it off, we had 5 girls sharing one bathroom, while the other bathroom only had 2 people using it.  Our 5 were the ones who were late, because we were all tired from the night before.  Angela had to come in and wake me up two times, and some of the other girls multiple times.  By the time we were finally ready, we were late to breakfast by at least 10 to 15 minutes.  All the other floors were there except for our floor.  Everybody was kind of grumpy that morning.  That incident might be what we will encounter in college, so it gave me a chance to learn how to adapt to getting ready on short notice.

Needless to say, the rest of the day kind of went downhill from there.  I really hate to complain here, but I have to be honest.  Not every day is perfect, and while you can have a bunch of good days, there's always going to be one bad day.  But it's up to you to decide if you're going to make this day a good day or a bad day.

Our first session this morning was science.  We got to use the lab microscopes and conduct our own investigation into identifying the different organisms that were on the slides.  We talked about the different careers in science, the kinds of courses you would have to take in college if you became a science major, and other stuff.

I learned some things about myself today.  Coming from a background where I'm almost always the only deaf person around.  I'm the only deaf kid in the Class of 2000 at my public high school.  Ever since I was in kindergarten, I have been the only deaf kid in my class.  There were a few instances where there would be maybe one or two deaf kids at my school, but I didn't have much interaction with them, because we were in different grades.  This is the first time where I have been in a totally deaf environment, and it was awesome.  I still have a lot to learn, as my communication skills are not there yet in ASL.  I can understand what another person is signing to me *MOST of the time*, but I have more difficulty in expressing myself in sign.  There is a lot about deaf culture and mannerisms which I am not familiar with, and I haven't had the experience with it, so I was in for a shock.

Getting in that environment, and not being prepared led me to experience a kind of stress, because I wasn't used to all the different ways and types of deaf people we had here.  I'm not used to being poked, tapped, or punched all the time, and I could only take so much before I freaked out.  That was probably the biggest surprise I got when I was here.  There were other things of course, but that's the one that really got to me.

Luckily, I have two great RAs, and people here at EYF, so I was able to talk to them about how I was feeling. They were able to explain to me about all the different stuff, the things I was feeling upset about.

I prefer not to name the person, so she is going to be anonymous. The one thing that really helped me was the fact that she gone through this herself, and she knew exactly how I was feeling.  That was a great help, because she was able to tell me what I might expect to happen next.  I was thankful to hear this stuff, because I feel more prepared.  I think that if I had some knowledge and preparation before I came here, I probably would have handled it better.  So to my friends and classmates, sorry if I was kind of in a bad mood.  I just didn't know how to explain it to you guys.

Because this forum is a public forum, and these are my private thoughts about my experience, but I want you to know that I'm being very honest with you, because maybe one person who reads this will be experiencing the same thing as I was, and then they would know that they were perfectly normal.  I wish I had that guidance, but now I do.  I hope that by reading this, someone will gain a greater understanding of what it's like, and then they will be prepared.  I still have a long way to go down the road though.

Anyways, this afternoon we went to the Career Awareness - Human Services forum.  We got to talk about goals and steps for preparing for the future.  The ideas my group came up with were great.  There were even a few ideas which I hadn't even thought of before!  It was a great brainstorming session we had.  Later we moved on to the new classroom, where we talked about human services, and teaching.

We had to decide what we thought was the reasonable starting salary for a person in a specific type of job, and the amount of education they would have to get.  Some of the facts were quite surprising.  When we went to the teaching discussion, we talked about our favorite teachers and what made them our favorite teachers.  We also discussed what we thought were important qualities that teachers should have.  At the end of the class, we had to come up with our own lesson plan.  Jake, Claudine and I used Jake's lesson plan, which was how to play basketball.  He used his shirt rolled up into a ball to demonstrate how to shoot the basketball.  I received the shirt, which had hit me in the head, which I threw back at him, and resulted in a t-shirt war.  It was fun though.

That night we had our treasure hunt, where we got to explore the LBJ square by LBJ and the Campus Cafeteria.  Even though there was no reward for whoever got back first with all the clues, a lot of people kind of forgot that, and it turned into a race.  We still had fun though.  The theme of the treasure hunt was "Communiversity", combining the the two words "Community" and "Diversity".  At NTID, it is an important topic because it has to do with the NTID community's well-being.  We have to be able to accept and respect the differences that all of us have, because some of us sign only, talk only, talk and sign, wear hearing aids, don't wear hearing aids, have a cochlear implant, went to deaf school, mainstreamed, etc.  With a wide variety of backgrounds, yet sharing one thing in common, we have to be able to get along.  Open yourself up to learning about other people and you will broaden your horizons.  In order to do well at NTID/RIT, you need to be able to take on that challenge. Our reward for this treasure hunt was the lesson that we learned, and these cool necklaces they gave us that said "EYF 1999". That was really awesome that the RAs and Staff did that for us. It's a great keepsake for us.

Well, I think that's enough for today.  See you guys tomorrow!

-Allison

What We Did Today:
Tuesday, July 20, 1999

7:00 - 8:00 Breakfast
8:30 - 9:30 Personal Awareness
10:00 - 12:00 Career Awareness
12:00 - 1:15 Lunch
1:30 - 2:30 Personal Awareness
2:45 - 4:45 Career Awareness
5:00 - 6:00 Dinner
7:00 - 9:00 As You Like It Activity Night
9:00 - 10:00 Community Hour
10:00 - 11:00 Floor Meeting
11:00 - Lights Out

And now what you've been waiting for. . .