Kent’s Story

Growing up as a young kid, I didn’t realize that I was hearing impaired. I thought that the way that everything sounded to me was normal and that I was just like every other kid in class. Being born deaf in one ear may not sound like a drastic hearing impairment, but it has definitely affected the way I learned. The worst thing about being deaf in one ear are seating charts. Seeing as how I was deaf in my left ear, I preferred sitting on the left side of the classroom near the front so that I could hear better on my right side. Whenever I was placed on the right side of a classroom, I always felt uncomfortable and ashamed to ask to move. Thoughts would run through my head, “Should I tell the teacher? This class is going to suck if I don’t move seats.” Being hearing impaired also made the social environment in school awkward for me. Whenever someone talking to me was on my left, I had to pretend to know what they were saying when in actuality I had no idea what they were saying. This lead me to become ashamed of my impairment and being secretive about it. I was only able to tell a select few that I was deaf and even then, it’s awkward for me because of my shame. Not being able to hear well in class affected my learning in certain ways. First of all, because I have a hard time hearing, if I didn’t get a good listen of what the lecture or lesson was then I didn’t get the content and my grade suffered. Other things that my hearing impairment affected was my ability to communicate to others. It wasn’t so bad all the time though. To the people that knew about my hearing impairment, I could pretend to act like I didn’t hear them when I just wanted to ignore the people around me. This made my close friends frustrated when I would ignore them. All in all, my hearing impairment hasn’t completely held me back from achieving the education that I desire, but it has limited certain aspects of my life. These aspects are things that I’ve learned to grow with and adjust accordingly