Being Deaf Report
Being raised as a Christian I have realized the value of being grateful for having the ability to see, hear and being blessed with many other things, but I sure never understood what life would be like if I ever lacked one of my senses. Fortunately due to this class experiment, I was able to experience what being deaf was like for the short time frame of six hours. The day and time that I chose for this experiment was Sunday morning to midafternoon. I believe that this was a crucial time where I would be able to interact with many family members and church members in order to better understand a day in the life of a deaf person.
The day before I had explained to my husband and parents that I would be conducting this experiment and that they could show their support by not talking. Preparing breakfast at home didn’t seem so challenging until I sat at the table with my husband to just realize that we couldn’t have a conversation over breakfast. Instead we only communicated with facial expressions which was definitely interesting and something new for us. As I went about my morning to get ready for church I realized that I couldn’t turn on my music and I found that to be very frustrating, being that music seems to brighten up my day. Although my husband and I live in Visalia we commute to Porterville to attend our home church. This commute had never seemed so long. We had no music on the background and we couldn’t speak. I realized that although it was my experiment my husband somehow had been dragged along for the ride. I was able to sense some frustration in him so I just reached for his hand and squeezed it as I smiled. That somehow seemed to work and I was rather surprise that we had started communicating without speaking. Half of the morning had gone by, but now I was about to be extremely challenged as I carried on with my experiment at church. Fortunately, I am a Sunday school teacher so I decided that it was best for me to run into my classroom before running into any members of the congregation, which I managed to do successfully. I sat quietly in my classroom as I prepared my material to teach my students. As my students walked in I handed each and everyone of them a piece of paper stating that we all would be conducting class without speaking and would have to find other ways of communicating. My students weren’t to surprise being that I am a very