Today was my first full day working in the VRS center at Gallaudet. I did a reasonably okay job, except for goofing up the explanation of regional toll-free numbers and fumbling a request to transfer a call when it was extending past the time I was supposed to leave. Oh, and my first call was an answering machine message that I didn’t actually leave because I had plugged my headset into the wrong jack! I didn’t figure that out until the next call, which was connected to a live person who couldn’t hear me, heh.

I discovered that you can’t really do anything important while you’re waiting for a new call to arrive - every time I went to start an e-mail or something, I had to leave in the middle of it, and when the call ended I had completely forgotten where I was in the letter. So mostly I just kept my e-mail window open to keep an eye on things, and I surfed news websites when I wasn’t on a call, because those are easy to drop instantly and come back to.

To be honest, I struggled with a lot of calls, particularly those where the connection was slow or the lighting was poor. But I taught myself a mantra on my very first day of training, and my trainer said it was a good one: As long as the communication was successful, I did a good job. Sure, sometimes I could have interpreted better, sounded better, been faster, etc. But the important thing is that the deaf person and the hearing person conducted their business together successfully. At the end of the day, that’s what matters.