When I graduated from my high school, I was totally pumped up all for college, anxious to taste that independence, states away from my family in Louisiana, to Rochester Institute of Technology in New York (granted, I was born in New York and moved south due to school/family issues, so I technically knew what it was like). I thought I was ready to truly live and experience myself in college and taste the actual differences between the cultures of deaf and hearing, and to exist 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 some kind of the mentality where they’d say and encourage “think about only yourself.” It seemed to me that is when people would be constantly not 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, and that hit me really hard, about my happiness here. I felt like I wasn’t being happy here. I’d get into contact with my friends who were at Gallaudet almost every day, and I realized that I wanted to grow and flourish in a culture of deafness, where we knew each other’s pains and the discrimination that they suffer every day. Then 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.