What's It Like Being Deaf In College? (American Sign Language Vlog) (Mostly) 

These people are basically describing my life right now! Being deaf in college is like a stigma to so many students and teachers who have the nerve to ask me, for example: "How did you even get accepted? Wow, you got Deans list? That must be impressive for someone like you" and the list goes on. I've never had troubles with teachers not wanting to share their power points, etc, but that is only because university policy forbids that kind of accessibility being denied. Captions are always still a struggle, especially because of the dreaded auto generated captions. They're horrible. I try and show some of my professors your previous videos and show them how bad captions can be when they're auto generated, but their response is "You can speak and you have hearing aids, how can it be that hard".... interesting mix of opinions!

What a great video!! I'm not deaf but when Stacy Abrams mentioned the awkward comment her professor said to her about reading levels and Stacy mentioned writing a memo, it reminded me of when I decided to start writing letters to not only my teachers, but also to new friends (well, not letters, but I led them to webpage) to educate them on what to expect and how to treat me respectfully as someone with a combo disability and chronic illness. I probably appear pushy to some people, but as Stacy said, you can have a PhD and still know nothing about (insert subject here). And there's def a difference between emotional intelligence/empathy and intellectual intelligence. The two don't always mesh....see many doctors with their bedside manners, for example. :/ I know from a family member who worked at a hospital near Gallaudet that audism is still rampant even among audiologists and ENT docs who meet with many d/Deaf patients.

I find it weird how teachers don't care about all the students needs. Like it IS part of the job

Awesome video! I can't understand the film school students not wanting to work with a deaf person. If I had the opportunity to work with someone with a different perspective, on anything creative especially, I'd jump at the chance.

I have severe hearing loss and grew up in the hearing world. I have hearing aids, but they don't completely "fix" me like people tend to think. I sadly do not know ASL. My high school experience was awful. Everyone told me college would be so much better. I met with the lady who was over disabilities. She promised me the world. Needless to say, she lied. I received no help. College ended up being so much worse than high school was. I feel like at least in high school I had my friend who was with me at all times who would repeat things when needed. The professors would not turn on CC. They would not print my notes out. They would not print the lesson plans out. They would not print my assignments out. I never recieved or was offered an FM system, although I asked, I never recieved. I had no interpreter either. I was taking 5 classes. I failed 3 because I did not receive any help. I dropped out after two semesters and I have no desire to go back. Hearing people try to tell me it was just the college I attended. No, HOH/Deaf/deaf people are discriminated everywhere. I was so stressed out with College I thought I was having a mental break. People do not understand the stress we go through. I have been looked down on because I dropped out of college.Hearing people do not understand the struggles I went through, and they don't even try. They make me feel so bad about myself. They really make me feel like a dumb deaf person. I now am in debt from students loans, and I am stressing out about what career I am going to pursue. I'm stressing out about a job, period. I just do not know how I am going to make it in life.

The No PowerPoint or technology is kind of ridiculous unless it was awhile ago. If a professor has an attitude about having to give accommodations, they either need education about life as a disabled student, or they need to rethink teaching.

I've asked my teacher to turn on captions for a video and she did even though everyone in my class was hearing including me. The reason I asked her to turn them on was because hearing people mishear or completely miss a word or two. I always watch stuff with captions on because I tend to mishear or not hear a word because of background noise.

As a hearing person aspiring to work in higher ed, this was a must watch! I'm sharing this to a few higher ed FB groups I'm a member of, as well as posting this on my professional Twitter. Thanks for compiling this, Rikki!

Pfft. What? Turning on captions for a movie is the easiest thing ever. You just go to settings.

Regarding Joseph's story, I cannot believe that your teacher would do that to you. Just play the movie anyway without captions. Did he/she even feel bad for doing that? As a teacher I could NEVER imagine doing that to a student. Even if we were pressed for time... like my goodness. At least tell the tech people to come in a half hour so that at least they could turn on the captions after a half hour. And your teacher knew that you were in their class... so why didn't they make sure they had the captions working ahead of time?! That's a pretty shitty teacher if you ask me.

Also, Rikki, you're starting to look like a native ASL user now :) Keep it up!

Can I get connected with Joseph please?? I'm deaf, oral, and currently a film school student! I would love to chat with him :)

It was really nice to listen to other people's stories that relate to mine in some ways. I was fortunate enough to not have many problems during my education, I only had note takers (although I hardly needed them much) at university and my teachers were so supportive that they ensured that I understood everything. They made sure I didn't miss out and they never doubted me in my works which was really good. In terms of peers, they were nervous at first but by the end of the year, they were comfortable with me even sometimes I can't understand them well. I was starting to feel isolated when I went into college, mostly in my 2nd and last year because my friends had either quit college or dropped out one of the subjects (I did A Levels, I'm from UK), so I was pretty much alone but I was fortunate to have a close friendship with my assistant who literally would do anything to support me, and it was so rare to have an assistant like that. You should keep making videos with guests like these based on various experiences to help viewers learn more about deafness! I noticed that the world (well I noticed mostly America anyway) is becoming more aware of disabilities, even in my experience as a deaf person so every little helps!

Man alive can I relate to this! from no closed captioning to CART not showing up. University life can be challenging!

If you ever do a part two, I'll contribute. I dropped out of college because of bad experiences related to my deafness. It's nice to see others' POVs! Especially with RIT, I was accepted there but I didn't go. My sister is going there, and I hope her experience there is a good one.

We live in the year 2017 and people are still that ignorant.

Have you heard of the limping chicken blog? I remember the UK BBC program about young D/deaf people that the blog got its name from because one of the interpreters had to leave early because she needed to take her chicken to the vets because it was limping

As a hearing person going deaf, I find your videos so eye opening about deaf culture and what others have gone through. The first gentleman at film school said something that hit me....he had to remember to use his voice. That's not something I would have thought about since I'm hearing and use my voice as my main communicator. It's like switching between foreign languages. Btw...kudos to him for persevering through the college. You think by the time you're in college or working in the adult world you wouldn't be exposed to bullies. That should be a childhood problem (well it shouldn't be a problem at all). I commend you all for having the internal strength to follow your dreams despite douchebags. I'm sure you're more resilient and stronger for it. I totally got what the phd student was saying. She had to become instructor as well as student. With my chronic illnesses, I find I'm the same way. I have these ring braces for my fingers. They're very obvious, plus I tend to talk with my hands (another reason I want to sign). Every single day, no exaggerstion, I get at least one comment on them. Most days I advocate and educate that they are not fancy silver jewelry that I love in abundance (one on every knuckle), I'm not an artist, hippy, or musician. I'm a girl with a complex genetic disease and while these rings look cool, they are a major pain, literally, but I cannot function without them. Other days I'm just not in the mood to get into it. Even to the really ignorant ones. So I just say thank you when they say cool rings. When they say what are those? I admit sometimes I just say jewelry. I feel guilty afterwards, that I passed up an opportunity to educate, but some days you just don't want the attention. Most of the time people are just curious about things they've never seen or heard of before, and I'm OK with that. I admire each of these people for finding a way to work within a broken system. Speaking for all my hearing counterparts in the world, I don't think most of us mean to be rude or insensitive toward deaf people, but many of us have never had exposure to deaf people and certainly not deaf culture. Without my own personal interest in sign language, I would never know. So sometime, most of the time, we put our foot in our mouth, by being caught off guard. So we say ignorant, stupid things. It doesn't make it right, just throwing another side in the mix. Now that I'm more aware of deaf culture, and even with my own disabilities, I find myself wondering what the sensitive way to say something, ask something, etc to a deaf person (or other disabilities) is without offending. Sometimes every way I play a scenario out in my head, they all sound rude. And I really, really hate that. Hopefully the giant foot in my mouth will be taken as that I mean no disrespect, I'm just ignorant, but trying.

Thank you to all the people in this video who provided their perspectives. I learned a lot!

I absolutely love this video. Listening to everyone's stories and having some similar and some very different experiences really puts things in perspective. Being hard of hearing in a psychology program was almost impossible until I learned how to use accessibility services, but I was never downright refused help, that sounds horrible! I love these story time videos!! :) Y'all rock!

This was wonderful. Also spurred me on to get back into learning BSL; I used to know a few bits and pieces, but never really got to consolidate it. Now I will!

I've worked as a note taker for the Disability Resource Center at my university--it was very interesting to learn more about what d/Deaf students have to do to get equal access to their education. I learned a lot from this video. Also, what is a voice interpreter?

I really liked this and learning about other people's experiences. Well done! :)

Wow! I know this is an older vlog but thank you so much to everyone who shared their experiences for this video. I've learned a lot from watching.

Great video and information Rikki! Thanks for sharing!

I completely understand if teachers dont know how to be fully accessible to everyone in their class, since there are so many different types of disabilities. However, I do believe instructors should always try to learn what the student's needs are, and do their best to accommodate for them. For example, a lot of my professors didn't know how to accommodate for my disability, because I am a HOH person majoring in music, with a minor in audio production. As you can imagine, not a lot of deaf/HOH people go into those fields. However, everyone was willing to work with me. So far, I haven't had a situation where the professors flat out didn't care. I am fortunate enough to go to a mainstream school that is in general, filled with open-minded people.

Rikki, I can't find your post about signing "few", but I start at my pinky and work up to my index finger with my thumb....almost like snapping my fingers, but not quite (I did say "almost") - give it a ........oh, how can I resist??? ...... few tries!!

Thank you for sharing this video. It is interesting to see what other's experiences are like with higher education when they require accommodations. I have low vision and have a graduate degree and was recently talking with others and its amazing how different the level of support can be from school to school or professor to professor. Also, this was a great way to see a number of people signing at once. I am currently learning sign language to work with deaf-blind students at work :)

Anyone else have the problem where some of the captions had a ... and you could not access the rest of the sentence/thought?

Great video Rikki. Very informative and educational. 👂👍

I know of at least two deaf students at my university. I've had courses with one of them and my impression is that he does well even though he is a non-speaker, but that he also seems to be a bit isolated even though the university goes to great lengths to create a healthy community among all students. He has some really good interpreters as far as I can see, but I often think it must be hard for him if he doesn't know anyone closely.

Great upload. I like that. Hes wasnt making it about just him personally. He was approaching her for all the deaf children in classes. Most hearing get impatient and frustrated. Cant understand why as some Teachers. Some Teachers not all. You would think. They would try to make and meet every students expectations in their learning level to excel thier students goals. And the fact they've all kept going toward what they want. And are successful. And does anybody know if Joseph started or have any films. His channels ceased. And if anybody can recommend any deaf films pls. Id be happy. Thanks

♥️♥️♥️sharing the love for these people and for teaching me more about what it is to be human♥️♥️♥️

I am shocked that the teacher in Joseph's story did not know how to use caption. That school if for deaf and hard of hearing students. Also the non deaf and hard of hearing students were so mean. I would expect RIT to have guidelines for those students and rules about students working together. I am glad you like your interpreters tho. I have a hearing loss and can relate to kids/students not including the deaf and hard of hearing students. I have had problems in classes with students being mean about my hearing loss and them bullying me for it. I do got to say thanks for sharing your story. I am also looking into RIT for a college to go to.

Interesting video. Wow some were very fast with sign language. I couldn't keep up with the captions lol.

Rogan, are you in the Upside Down?? Jokes aside, this is an awesome video. Thanks for sharing your experiences everyone ❤

I'm hearing and want to go to Gallaudet for my bachelors in interpreting so I'm wondering how many hearing people Stacy encountered. I'm slightly worried that I'll be one of the only hearing people in my classes.

Who was the girl with glasses? It would've been nice to put a name to the face. the first girl. Let me tell you I was mainstreamed my entire life. I never had any interpreters in school because i learned ASL in my 20's. So there was no point in having a terp in college. My first memories of having difficulty with hearing were probably grade 8. I always choose a desk in the front. Except when there was a new seating plan and i'd be in the back(I didn't hear an alarm on my wrist watch-got called to the front and thought i was in trouble). All through HS I sat in the front for all my classes. College I got extra time on tests, a note taker but still ended up failing the one program. Took 3 years off of school and did lots of volunteering(never had a paying job). When I went back to a private career college there was really no option for an interpreter. But it was ok because i still passed the program with an 80% avg. We could sit at our computers and take notes, even tho we could just type them i did a lot of hand notes. At the career college you can start a program say in April and be done in 9 months so for a few months there was another deaf student who was almost done the program but we sat next to each other and it was fun. I had my first group project with her. I was able to take my test in a quiet room in the adminstration office. I think i was given extra time but i didn't need it at most i took 1hr. Teacher gave us half an hour before every class to study or work on projects and at 8:30am we'd start our exam and we'd get until 10am. That's the extent of my experiences.

Heya! Like your vids. I'm curious: when you sign, is it the same "speed" as speaking? Do some words get sort of skipped or grouped together? Because it's sign, does HOW you sign it give different meanings to the same word? If I missed a vid where you explained more of this, I'll be happy to check it out!

Petition mainstream scools and colleges for Real-Time Captioners for deaf students who voice and don't sign. ;)

Is there a way to connect with Joseph? Does he have a vlog or channel?

how could people be so rude they are idiots... i treat all people with respect

the video was interesting but the cc were too fast for me. i'm no native speaker but love your videos. greetings from Germany

The worst thing I've heard from a student or teacher is " it's loud enough.." 🙄

This might be a dumb question, but how does one get around only signing their whole life and not being able to speak orally? Do you just have an interpreter with you all the time?

prakash Deaf

The caption always cuts of at the end of a long sentence which is so fucking annoying