Helen Keller Struggles

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Helen Keller had faced many hardships growing up. As a deaf-blind child, her life had many restrictions as to what she was able to do during her childhood. She wasn't always deaf-blind though. When Keller was 19 months old she had contracted an illness and after it had passed she was brought to the doctor. Keller said, "The beginning of my life was...much like every other little life," as she could see and hear, but the illness had left her deaf and blind. Not only was Keller deaf and blind, when Dr. Alexander Graham Bell recommended for her to have a tutor from Perkins Institution for the Blind, Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, didn't get along very well. Sullivan did not like the way the young girl acted and said she was rude and had bad manners. Keller didn't always trust her …show more content…

She enjoyed learning and was very determined to learn many new things. When she was young, her parents hired Sullivan to help her learn to communicate. Sullivan started teaching her by spelling the manual alphabet into Keller's palm, but Keller didn't realize they spelt words that described objects around her. One day Sullivan brought Keller to a well, put Keller's hand in the water, and spelled w-a-t-e-r into her palm, and she realized that the letters spelled words. After she was taught by Sullivan, Keller was eager to learn more. She managed to learn the manual alphabet, how to read raised type and braille, and how to write sentences. All this was done in just six months, and Keller was still a young girl when she learned it. In 1899, she passed the entrance exam and was accepted into Radcliffe College. Shortly after, in 1904, Keller graduated cum laude. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a college degree. Throughout her life, she faced many challenges, but she was able to overcome the huge challenge of learning as a young, deaf-blind

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