GSR 102-1

Who am I? You will never know. I guess I could tell you a handful of things about myself. I'm 17 going on 18 in December. I LOVE to play basketball with my friends. Music is my life, I can't imagine my life without it and my favorite color is red. If you ever buy me a half-gallon of cookie dough ice cream, I will love you. I was born into a hearing family who had no experience with deaf people. You could say when I was born, my parents were also born into the deaf world. When I was a 3 months old, my doctor said that since I was deaf, I could not talk. My mom was livid. She went to all the doctors in the state looking for a different diagnosis but they all were the same. Luckily, I had a mom who really cared about me. She bought me hearing aids at a young age and every night she will read to me until I fell asleep. When I was about a year old, my first word was "please". My mom was crying that her deaf son could talk, it was like a dream come true. As I was growing up I didn't have any deaf friends nor knew any. From 1st grade to 8th grade I was mainstreamed in a public school. It was challenging but I was lucky to have the whole class supporting me and always having my back. Up to this day, we still keep in contact. How often do you come across friends like that? Then the summer of 05' came. I was all ready to go to PCTI (Passaic County Technical Institute) a trade school close to my hometown. I was very psyched to see my friends all over again. All of a sudden, my parents had the audacity to tell me at the last minute that I would be going to MLHS (Mountain Lakes High School) a school 25 min away. The school also had a deaf program. I was so pissed. I couldn't believe they could do that to me and yank me away from my friends like that. Later that day I calmed down and decided to suck it up and go with the flow. On the first day of school, as I approached this entirely new environment, I saw people signing in a group. For the first time in my life, I saw sign language, seriously. They came up to me and started signing away, my guess was that they saw my hearing aids and assumed I could sign but I couldn't. I've never signed before in my life so we communicated on paper. I decided to take sign language classes but my friends insisted that they will teach me. As you can see, it was a success! I was signing like a native in 2 months. I would never forget that moment to finally accomplish something that would take people months or even years to do. Usually when a deaf person meets someone who's also deaf but cant sign, they tend to get frustrated and just forget about you. Luckily, I had friends who believed and cared about me. Right now, there are a handful of people on Gallaudet campus who taught me how to sign including my roommate. I will never forget that special group who taught me how to sign, they will always have a special place in my heart.