Goodbye deaf studies, hello history! No, not my major. But I’ve dropped DST 101 in lieu of HIS 111. The reason is that supposedly the GSR 103 class is going to replace the DST 101 class, so they might be considered equivalent, and I might not need it for the major. Time is money, and classes take time, so I spoke to my advisor today and switched into American History I. This is also required for the deaf studies major, so I have to take it eventually, and my advisor said that DST 101 is offered every semester, so I might as well take history now instead. When I went to the bookstore to check out the required books for the class, I was glad I hadn’t ended up in the Honors version - it requires four books compared to just one for the class I’m in! (Besides one honors class per semester is enough for now, and I already like my Honors English class.)

I am so frustrated with my computer, though. I managed to get SP2 installed, with the expectation that doing so would enable me to use the wifi at school, but now my computer is unbelievably slow. That’s probably why I rolled back the first time, heh. The power cord is also nearly dead, so I bought a replacement on eBay today. I really just want a new computer, but I can’t afford one. One with specs I like - XP Home, 1GB RAM, 80GB drive, and a DVD burner - is $584.50 using the discount program Gallaudet has with Dell. (I thought you couldn’t get XP with a Dell anymore; turns out you can - but you have to call them up to ask for it, you can’t get it online.) So it’s a lot, and I probably will keep fighting with my machine that is a few years old now.

Now I can finally talk about my past week of orientation. It’s been going pretty well - I can’t believe how much has happened! In the space of five days, I went from a normal member of honors to a grouch to a demoted “bridge to honors” student and back to being a full honors student. Whew!

I have also been mistaken for deaf almost constantly, and while it’s not a compliment anymore when somebody realizes I’m hearing, it’s still nice to realize that I don’t stick out like a sore thumb.

However I’ve also had an embarrassing moment that would only happen to a HUG student like me. I was in a makeup session of the ASL/Math assessment tests, and I was trying hard to concentrate. But an orientation session was also in there, and the leader was running late so the students were chatting and laughing…loudly. I got one of the test proctors to come over and asked if there was any way the other half of the room could be quieted down. I felt ridiculous asking such a thing in a deaf university, but I was trying to take a test, and I really couldn’t concentrate! They did quiet down and I was able to finish the test in peace…though I still completely bombed, hah! I didn’t even get what was going on, what the questions were, or
anything. Yikes!

I already have several of the books needed for my Deaf Studies and English classes, but there’s still a bunch more for my English class I have to buy.

I had a good experience relating to being a HUG student today. Yesterday I chatted with another HUG about whether it was culturally appropriate to participate in certain activities - I think somebody had been surprised that a hearing student could play sports for Gallaudet. Today we were sitting through class elections, and I turned to another HUG and said, “now this is the kind of thing I don’t think ’students like us’ can participate in.” Another girl behind her who knows us both said “no way! You guys can do anything, it doesn’t matter if you’re hearing.” Which is just way cool to hear, and I told her “thanks, that really makes me feel good!” I still am a little suspicious of whether it would REALLY be okay…it just feels like it would be taboo for a hearing person to be class president at a deaf college. But it’s great that at least somebody thinks it’s okay!

I am still kind of shell shocked when I browse Facebook and see all these people graduated high school in ‘07. I can’t believe I graduated high school ten years ago. I’ve been looking forward to my 10-year reunion for a while, but seeing all those ’07s just makes me feel kind of old instead!

I am officially scared about starting school. The trigger was hearing NPR’s summer segment, “You Must Read This.” I was amazed to realize that I used to listen to that piece when I was driving to work every day - part of the rat race, wearing button-down shirts, and working in a cube farm. Now I’m a student again, wearing t-shirts with funny things on them, and walking around campus. I can’t believe my life has changed so radically! Normally I would expect it to change on the order of the year-long Climate Connections series, not the months-long You Must Read This series.

Today was New Student Orientation. The drama surrounding Honors was carried a little further, but I did get caught up on most things - I got my ID, my parking sticker, and so forth. There was a bit of confusion regarding whether or not I’d taken a placement test, but it got straightened out when the right person was finally contacted.

Tomorrow, stuff starts at 9am. There’s a GLBT ice cream social in the evening so I’m planning on staying at least that late. I still have to visit the business office so I can promise to pay for stuff, but I think other than that I am mostly set. Hopefully I’ll get to speak with my academic advisor tomorrow too.

I left the honors retreat after a few hours this morning. No offense to anybody who was there, but it was honestly not appropriate for me. I was further offended by the head of the department, who was rather patronizing to me on the phone when she realized I had left. (I’d informed the coordinator, but not the head.) To be honest I don’t think she realizes that she’s dealing with a mature adult. She pays lip service to it, but she still treats me like somebody who’s just been released from Mommy and Daddy’s care and needs to be monitored at all times. But you know what? I’m a big girl. I’m not going to be treated like I’m fresh out of high school.

We agreed to meet tomorrow on campus before the rest of the activities begin at 3:00pm. I plan to let her know exactly how I feel, and that I expect to be treated like an independent person, not a teenager. If she doesn’t want to treat me differently from the 18-year-olds in the program, I’d rather be dropped from the program. It’s up to her - if she doesn’t like my request to be treated like an adult, she can drop me. Or she can treat me like an adult, that’s the choice. But I will not be patronized.

I’m not explaining the specifics because I don’t want to seem like I’m whining…but she definitely came across as patronizing. Yup.

I’m still waiting impatiently for my schedule to show up on the Gallaudet student services application, but meanwhile I finally heard back from the transfer specialist! If I am understanding the spreadsheet correctly, I currently have 8.5 credits from previous college experience. If I were to get credit for all of my previous experience, I would have 26.5 credits, making me a sophomore. They’re not finished evaluating it though - they are still trying to figure out what some of my courses would be equivalent to, so I may get some additional credits. Reportedly they’ll have everything fixed by the time orientation starts on the 22nd.

Today I took the English and math placement tests at Gallaudet. They said it would take about three hours, but it only took me about one hour. They clearly suggest the longer time because they think native ASL speakers will struggle more with the reading and writing portions, but as a native English speaker I breezed through them. The writing portion consisted of writing a 300-600 word persuasive letter, and I know I did a superb job on that. I am pretty sure I got everything right in the reading section.

Here is what my schedule could look like at Gallaudet. If I could totally pick and choose my classes and schedule, this is what I’d take, assuming my English placement results were as high as I expect them to be. I will be taking the placement exams on May 25th, but I don’t know if I have an advisor assigned yet.
MWF

9:00 - 9:50 - HIS 101 - World Civilization I (3 credits)
10:00 - 10:50 - PHY 107 - General Physics I (3 credits, might require math pre-req?)
11:00 - 11:50 - SOC 101 - Intro to Sociology (3 credits)
2:00 - 6:00 - VRS - working hard for the money

TuTh

9:30 - 10:50 - DST 101 - Intro to Deaf Studies (3 credits)
2:30 - 3:50 - ENG 120 - Accelerated College English I (3 credits)
4:00 - 8:00 - VRS - so hard for it honey

I suppose it would be possible to work in two shifts on Tuesdays and Thursdays - eat lunch at 11:00, work from 12:00 to 2:00, class from 2:30 to 3:50, and then work again from 4:00 - 6:00. That would make for a shorter day, but it might be harder to get in the VRS groove with such a short shift. (The minimum shift is two hours.)

I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, like author Michael Chabon. His article Maps and Legends came to my attention from this thread on Metafilter. After reading the article itself and the comments of a MeFi poster named breezeway, I wrote the following:

I’m another product of Columbia, although substantially later than Chabon and breezeway - I lived there from 1985-1998. And yet the experience was not substantially different, because Columbia still likes to think it is a utopia even though it hasn’t been for years. It’s got crime, social strata, suburban sprawl…but it’s always pushing the idea of being such a fabulous New Town like it was in the 1960s.

Like breezeway, I graduated from Wilde Lake HS - the only class (1997) to attend all three schools. The crunchy granola old building from 1971, the temporary building in Clarksville River Hill, and the new shiny one on the site of the old one. Honestly, the old Wilde Lake was a lot like the old Columbia - there were no walls for many years, and even when I got there in 1993 there were still no ceilings - you could hear everything everywhere. The library media center was literally in the center of the building. It was a place designed for interaction, learning from each other, and communication. The new Wilde Lake is more for compartementalized learning styles - you are in this class, learning this at this time. You can’t see other classes, you can only learn from what’s going on in your room. It’s like you’ve got blinders on…like the rest of the world.

This sounds overly philosophical, even to me - but I think it’s true. It’s obvious to someone who’s seen both buildings - they really speak to what’s going on in the rest of the city.

Well, I have finally heard something from the Hearing Undergraduate (HUG) program at Gallaudet! Yesterday I was super excited, but today I am kind of more muted. The good news is that I did make it through the first round of cuts. Because the number of slots for hearing students is so small (only 5% of the student body), they go through the paperwork and cut people. Then the remaining get invited for interviews, and after that they pick who they’re actually going to offer admission to. So making it through the first round is a good thing, and the few people who’ve heard me talk about this say they think I’ll get all the way through with no problem.

The part that made me more muted today is that they goofed when they told us the interview dates. Yesterday I was told it would be March 20-21, for both admissions interviews and the Sign Communication Proficiency Interview (SCPI), which basically tests “can you communicate in ASL, or not?” I replied immediately when I got the e-mail, said I was still interested, and subtly suggested that perhaps my RID certification would waive the need for the SCPI - I’m a certified interpreter, do I really need to prove that I can sign? The admissions guy said he’d check into it and let me know; I’m hoping they’ll waive the SCPI because it will save time, and also save me the $150 fee. But unfortunately…the dates were wrong. He meant to say February 20-21, when I am supposed to be in Las Vegas.

So I promptly e-mailed back and said I would be out of town from Feb 14-24, and could they please schedule me outside of those dates? I drove home and got progressively worked up on the way, until I felt like I was going to be sick. When I finally got home, I pulled up my e-mail, and he hadn’t responded. He sent out the correction at 4:50pm and I replied at 4:58, so he had probably already gone home. And then I proceeded to have a panic attack because I thought I was going to have to choose between Las Vegas and Gallaudet. I was totally flipping out by the time A got home, but she was able to calm me down. She said they would probably be flexible, but if not we would just change the dates, I could go for part of it, and then fly home for the interview, and she would fly home when her conference was over (it ends Feb 21st).

So, hopefully they will be flexible. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet here, but attending Gallaudet has been a lifelong dream. Seriously, since I was a little kid, I have wanted to go to Gallaudet. I used to say I’d be a janitor, I’d work in the cafeteria, I’d do anything just to be on campus. Then they implemented the HUG program in 2001, and now I’m applying to it! So I really would be living my dream…making my dreams come true…if I went to Gallaudet. I hope they’ll be flexible with the schedule!

I’m lucky that the school I’ve applied to, which has my desired major and community, is so close by - even though I am a married adult, I can attend classes on-site. But people out in the very rural areas of the country may not have this option - their families can’t pick up and move with them, and their preferred major isn’t available at any local colleges. An online college degree is a good potential solution for these people - the number of accredited universities offering online education is increasing rapidly. In some cases, students are still supposed to go to the campus for orientation, etc. - but there are others where you can do everything from your home computer. And there are a wide variety of online college courses that you can choose from - although I’m not sure “animal care” makes a good distance education major…unless you have very patient pets to practice on!