Meagan

Lots of people in my program get me thinking for various reasons, but Meagan is an especially interesting case. Meagan wears some sort of hearing device, and she's reliant on that and on her lip reading skills to hear what goes on around her. The hearing device is about the size of half a deck of cards, and she wears it above her left ear, with some sort of attachment that goes up under her hair. I'm not sure how it works. I'm also not sure how well it works. Standing behind her, I've said her name and had to touch her shoulder to get her to turn around because my voice doesn't get her attention. If you heard her speak, you'd know immediately that she has hearing difficulty; she's not difficult to understand in the least, but the tone of her voice is slightly off and she doesn't hit consonants as hard as a hearing person would. She seems reliant on the feeling of her voice, rather than the sound, to control her speaking volume. (If you can't get a sense of what I mean by this, imagine the way you'd gauge the volume of your own voice if you were speaking to someone standing nearby and were listening to very loud music through headphones.) I overheard her telling a classmate that while she knows some sign language, her parents encouraged her to learn to read lips and take advantage of the hearing she had so that she'd be better able to fit in to the hearing world.

Two transcribers follow Meagan to all of her classes. She keeps a small laptop in front of her, and they type everything that the professor and students say and it appears in front of her on the screen only a few seconds behind. I've seen her refer to it once or twice, but for the most part her eyes are glued to the person who is speaking. I think it's mostly useful for when she looks down to write notes. I can listen and write at the same time, but if she's looking at her paper and not at the face of the speaker, she can't follow what's being said and so has to look back at the screen to catch up. The first time I really noticed this, I tried the same thing myself, just staring at moving lips to try to tell what was being said. I suppose through some combination of the sound she's able to get through her hearing aide and the motion of the person's lips, she pieces it together. However she does it, I'm impressed. I think it would be extremely difficult.

She and I were talking today about a speaker she wanted to go see. She had to email the office that manages services for students with disabilities several days in advance to arrange for a transcriber to be present. A few times this year, I've wanted to go see a speaker and at the last minute had something come up or decided I was too tired or not interested and just not showed up. Meagan doesn't have that luxury; a transcriber will be waiting for her if she arranges for one, and she's got to stick to her plans. She can't dash into class 30 seconds before it starts because she needs a seat close to the front so that she can see the professor's face clearly, and she has to get her laptop set up and connected to the transcribers' machines.

Meagan has chosen a difficult field for someone with hearing difficulty. If a young child reads "cot" instead of "cat," a person with full hearing would know that they were having difficulty with short vowels. This sort of error - if it happens frequently and if the child doesn't respond to intervention - can be indicative of a very big problem for a developing reader. I wonder how she picks up those errors. For one thing, the motions made by the lips while pronouncing the two words aren't all that different, and I'm not sure how well she can hear the difference. For another, a child who is reading looks down at the page, so it has to be difficult for her to read their lips. From what I understand, she's doing really well in all of her courses and in her practicum, so she must have it figured out. Still, it's admirable to me that someone with an obstacle can excel at the same things able bodied people struggle with.