My Disability: An Experience That Affected My Day

For my disability, I was hearing impaired for a day. After experiencing this for a day, it is hard to believe that there are so many people who are deaf who lead normal, productive lives. My best friends mom is hearing impaired so being able to know on at least a very small scale what she goes through was incredibly interesting. There were many experiences I had throughout the day that I did not expect, experiences that effected my day, and experiences that changed the way that I feel about people with disabilities.
Being hearing impaired made my day much more difficult than I first expected. The struggle that effected my day the most was that almost all of the classes I am taking this trimester are lecture classes, and getting my assignments

after missing an entire hour of lecture was very difficult. I had to continue taking notes in my classes without being able to hear anything. I ended up just copying off PowerPoints without understanding what was happening at all.
The reaction that I got from people I did not know was very surprising to me. People did not care that I was deaf, and not in a good way. Rather than being looked at weirdly, people simply tried to talk to me normally and expected me to be able to understand and respond normally to conversations. I had headphones on that made it very apparent that I would not be able hear them or understand what they were saying, I cannot imagine the amount of conversations that hearing people have tried to have with those who are hearing impaired without realizing it.
Some of the experiences I had, I expected.

My friends made no effort that day to try to talk to me. I was just kind of ignored for an entire day because they could not relate to my disability and did not want the effort to write something out to talk to me or to try another way to talk to me. I was not surprised by their reaction to my disability at all. I know that most people will not take time out of their day to accommodate people with disabilities.
However, what I did not expect was for my teachers to respond in the same way. They continued lecturing as if they did not have someone who was deaf in their class and made no effort to make sure I understood what was going on in the class even though I could not hear. None of the teachers I had took any time out of their classroom schedule to makes sure that I got the notes or that I was doing the problems correctly without a lecture.
While the experience I had was very eye opening, I do wish that it could have been more realistic. It is impossible to lose my hearing completely for a day, so when I had to wear headphones with music playing to drown out outside noises. The headphones became increasingly uncomfortable during the day and during fourth period I had to take a break because of the headache I was getting from them. I wish that I would have been able to have an entire day without the pain of the headphones to experience being hearing impaired to have a more realistic

experience.
This was one of the most influential school projects I have had. I know understand on a small scale, how people with disabilities feel throughout the day. It is a very unsettling feeling when people do not take the time, even if it is just a couple minutes, to make sure that you have the resources you need to complete your tasks for the day. My friends made no effort to accommodate me during the day that I was hearing impaired, I cannot imagine what they would be like if I truly lost my hearing. I now understand that even by taking a couple minutes to help someone who has a disability, no matter where I am in life the grocery store, school, or any other place I may be, could make their day and their life a little easier. After all, they don’t get to take the headphones off at the end of the day and go back to life as usual.