She sits on a hard metal chair welded to a desk. Unblinking. Her eyes are focused on the speaker with intensity. A topic is being discussed, but she doesn’t know what the topic is. The blackboard behind the speaker, her visual cue, remains empty. Smudged with chalk-dust that provides no information to her seeking eyes. The speaker’s lips answer a question, she catches part of the answer to a question she never heard. “Roosevelt something something 1858 something New York.” Roosevelt. Which Roosevelt? Rosevelt?. Did what? Mentally, she takes a note to figure out which Roosevelt was even alive in 1858, and what the event could possibly be. Another question rings out in the back of the classroom, she turns her head to catch the last word, and totally misses the answer as the teacher rattles it off at lightening speed.
It may not even be something about Roosevelt, it may be something about a foundation called Roosevelt, or about Eleanor Roosevelt, or Roosevelt Avenue, or it may be a word that looks like Roosevelt on the lips, but is not. The best that she can do is settle quickly on a guess, and hope that she is right. The research that she will do later depends on it.
The class is an hour long. She’ll be tested on it all later. The day lasts from 8AM to 3PM, class after class strung together with 5 minute breaks inbetween. When she gets home, instead of doing her homework or getting much-needed sleep, she’ll spend the time patching together the fragments of things her eyes caught, and trying to understand how they interrelate. She’ll read her class book, but always with the knowledge that the book only contains part of the information. She’ll go up on the internet, and hope that the fragments she caught were right. 1858? Or 1958? After a few hours she’ll know all the possible versions of the story and will pass out in exhaustion with the other five classes un-covered. She doesn’t know where to start for Geometry or Algebra, the names of theorems all missed as they’re not stored anywhere in her mental dictionary of context clues. Those are classes she’ll fail.
The next day she’ll walk in and sit through the same exact class again. Different information will be discussed, but to her it’s all the same. Darting her head around frantically to catch the snippets, refusing to blink until her eyes turn red and dry and start to tear up. Everyone will pass their homework to the head of the class, and the teacher will walk over to her desk to ask where the previous day’s homework is. Direct stimuli, her brain will snap to attention and her eyes will focus on the teacher’s lips. Every word will be understood and every question will be answered. The teacher will walk away shaking her head in disbelief. The student is a problem, obviously bright but unwilling to work.
In her mind, that last interaction is how lipreading is done. Everything is understood, it’s an absolute hearing replacement. Fully functional. Reality often doesn’t even begin to approach that.
October 27th, 2005 at 7:53 pm
Ai, that could’ve been a biography about me!
It’s painful to think about how much more educated I could be if I had not experienced that exact same situation day in and day out in high school. I could have been in AP classes, Honor’s Society, the Debate club, even ‘gasp’ on the student government! High school was a royal pain up my ass. The only classes in which I didn’t pass for “average” were art classes - mainly because everyone’s sitting there in silence, painting the hour away - no lipreading needed there. Is it any big wonder that I ended up going to art college and being a designer? I wonder if I would’ve gone down the same path as an artist if I had not been born deaf? I could’ve been a doctor, a astronaut, even ‘gasp’ the next president!
In a strange way (please don’t laugh), I can relate with Barbie
In a college cultural semiotics class, I wrote a 10 page paper on our perky little friend, Barbie; it was an outline of her origins and the role she’s played in our culture. Not so much today, but back in the 80’s (when I was positively obsessed with the damn dolls), Barbie came neatly packaged in these perfectly pink little boxes - each one brightly labeled “Teacher Barbie!”, “Nurse Barbie!”, or the ever-predictable “Secretary Barbie!!!”. So, in a nutshell, I’m trying to point out how like Barbie, I felt a little “boxed-in” with choosing my career path. Barbie’s “box” was simply that she was a gorgeous chick - the execs at Mattel couldn’t see her being anything other than a teacher, etc. And my “box”… is clearly my deafness.
October 27th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
I hear you on that…because I used to go through that in high school and however, we used the old phonic ear system and the teachers had to put on microphones so that we could comprehend them during class. I did’nt excel in many courses but, like you Julie, Art was my best subject out of all of them.
I sat there in silence drawing away…and for some reason, this took place right after gym and I think it must’ve made me more relaxed so that I could focus better.
…and ended up going to art school a few years after I graduated. I could’ve been a psychologist or get into film-making, but I stuck with the aspects of creativity.
November 1st, 2005 at 4:43 am
Im a recently deaf student in a hearing art college, here in Ireland, I can completely relate to this artical, you describe my daily routien!
cheers 
My hearing has being deteriorating since the age of 7, im now 22, so my spoken language is good and I have been great at lipreading and i suck at sign language! which im still learning! I have no interprater, because in Ireland there are only 5 in the whole country!
In college im getting by on the lipreading but this cant last, im struggling in lectures as they take place in a dimly lit room, and im wrecked tired all the time!!
thank you for sharing this piece of writing, just so you know, ur not alone, and its great to know that im not alone either
Lette