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Kindergarten is the year of making new friends, learning to print the alphabet, and 1+1=2. However, for one 4-year-old, it involved words like eardrum, audiogram, and deaf.
Hi, my name is Samantha Amon. I'm a 17-year-old senior at LCCTC, and I am hearing impaired.
My hearing problems started in kindergarten. My mom would have to yell at me to get my attention, thinking I was choosing to ignore her. I’ll never forget the day she took me to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh to take a hearing test: the room they had me go in was full of stuffed animals and toys. There was a huge two-way mirror; I later found out that the person conducting my test was behind it like the Wizard of Oz, himself. The test consisted of various sound going off at different volumes. During the test, in my mind, I knew the sound were going off; I just couldn't hear them. To this day, it's the only test I'll never pass.
I grew up being told that, when I'm a teenager, I'll be deaf. Every hearing-able person has hairs in their ears which help sound waves travel to the brain. Well, mine are either not there or damaged; I'll never be able to have it fixed. My hearing is hereditary, which frightens me because I want kids. I want to have big, bright-eye children to look up at me and call me mom, but I don't want them to deal with the issues I did -- bullies, doctor appointments, constantly asking others to speak up or repeat themselves.
When I first got hearing aids, they were big and ugly -- no matter what they were always in plain sight. No kids really wanted to be friends with “an unwanted freak” who has something foreign in their ears.
I always say that there is a difference between not hearing someone and not understanding someone. My hearing doesn’t stop me from hearing you; it makes it harder for me to understand you. It’s like not hearing nothing, but hearing everything at the same time. The best example I can give to help someone understand is this: imagine yourself in a huge room full of hundreds of people and they’re all talking at once, none stop. However, you can’t focus on what one person is talking about.
Because of my hearing, I never heard words correctly, so I developed a speech impediment. I grew up going to a speech class once a week, every week, during school, until 7th grade. The only reason I don't have the class now is because I chose against it. My troubled letters were and still are: s, sh, st, r, x, and z.
I usually don't talk about how I was treated because it can be such a negative memory for me. I was bullied and picked on a lot, more so by the people I thought were my friends; I now know differently. Teachers use to automatically assume because I have an IEP (Individualized Education Program), I need a “modified” test. People told me that college would never happen, that my dream of becoming a nurse was stupid nonsense, and the sad part is -- I let myself believe them for too many years. They got into my mind and poisoned my attitude and the way I thought about myself. I became ashamed of who I was and what made me ME.
It took me till 11th grade to finally come to full terms that I couldn’t change who I was. However, it wasn’t me that helped me love myself. It was the tremendous amount of love and support I got from Vo-Tech. They helped me understand that there will always be hateful people in the real world, but it’s my job to keep those who love me close to my heart.
I’ve finally come to understand and accept that I’ll always have to work harder and take more time to focus on what’s being said. I have to work harder to hear the teachers, to understand the lesson. The moment I stopped letting my hearing tell me how to act, I saw a whole new world. I saw chances out there for me I thought were impossible. Everything became a possibility because I stopped holding myself back.
Senior year is the time for future plans and making memories, and that's what I'm doing -- with the major support of three best friends, one amazing boyfriend, and incredible family members.
Hi, my name is Samantha Amon, and I am a future nurse who has been accepted into Youngstown State University for the fall of 2016. Hear me roar!
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