When I graduated from my high school, I was totally pumped up all for college. This is probably the first time in my whole life where I was genuinely anxious about my future. I was ready to taste the independence, go back to my old home in New York (I moved to Louisiana for high school due to school/family issues), away from my family, to Rochester Institute of Technology. I thought I was ready to truly live and experience college, and taste the actual differences between the deaf and hearing cultures, and to coexist in both. I thought that everything would go perfect and I thought I would be happy.

It turned out that I was very wrong. After a few months of being in RIT, I virtually got slapped in the face almost every day. When I was meeting new people every day, and seeing my classmates, and even my friends, I would constantly notice that they had the mentality where they’d say and encourage “think about only yourself.” It seemed to me that is when people would not be paying attention about each other and only saw themselves. No matter what I did or would do, I saw that they simply don’t care. It was something that hit me really hard because I was accustomed to growing up in an environment where everyone at least cared to an extent. Before college, I grew up with small crowds, since the high school that I graduated from a high school was very small, roughly 40 students, and I was raised in other schools with around 5 to 10 people in groups, who we’d go to the same classes, hung out, and knew each other easily. Despite that, I tried my best to encourage myself to meet people every day, both deaf and hearing, but the mentality continued to be there. Another problem that constituted the whole was also the language barrier between the hearing and deaf people, since I knew only American sign language and they didn’t. I even gestured to ask them to type it out in phones or write it, but most of times they never really bother, which made me feel left out. Being here at RIT, they virtually made me feel very self-conscious because I’m deaf.

When I was helping with my friend’s relationship issues, she was telling me that she’s wasn’t happy being here. It hit to me: I wasn’t being happy here. I’d get into contact with my friends who were at Gallaudet almost every day and talk to them and express my feelings. I was thinking, and I realized that I wanted to grow and flourish in a Deaf culture, where we knew each other’s pains and the discrimination that they suffer every day. The same day, I thought to myself, “hey, why don’t you open your browser on your computer, type Gallaudet.edu, and register?” and I immediately did that and it all started from there.