Talking With Your Hands. Professor Ramos Blog

Talking With Your  Hands. I’ve always been fascinated with languages, and many times in the past I’ve  tried  to learn. When I was young the first language I tried tackling was Japanese, but I  soon  realized trying to learn a language I was never going to use was, impractical. As  the  years  went by I kept experimenting to see which one might stick. I tried  Russian,German, French, Spanish and while I did take quite a bit from all these  languages, I  never quite found them usable for my daily schedule. Then one day after meeting my  neighbor I had finally found a language that both fascinated me and gave me a  reason to learn. There was a time in my life when I believed I was going to be homeless, but  that  tale is for another time. Long story short, my parents reached out to me when they  heard I was couch hopping and offered to house me as long as I went to college.  Without a second thought I packed my few belongings, went job hunting and  registered for college. At first, I set my major to be horticulture and botanical studies,  but then after two years of being in a job I hated, I finally found a job I hated even  more. Working at a plant nursery. I realized then working with plants as a career just  wasn’t for me and soon after I changed my major to art. Specifically sculpture and  special effects. When I saw how big the competition was to acquire a job in that field  (some people taking as long as 30+ years  just to get recognized) I saw that sculpting  would stay a hobby. I registered for a few  general education classes such as math and  English just to get the credits rolling and I  never really considered language as a  possible career. Around this time I took notice to  my neighbor. I remember taking out the trash one day and looking over to his open garage. He  was talking with his wife, only he wasn’t talking, he was signing. This is when it hit me  that I was living next to a deaf family. I put the trash cans aside and I have no idea  why I  did at the time, but I felt like I needed to introduce myself. I walked over and  Said â€Å"Hi my names Matthew!†Ã‚  He was just  as surprised with me as I  was with myself.  I felt I was over-enunciating  everything, because  subconsciously I felt  like it would  help (it didn’t). He stopped and said â€Å"Hi, I‘m Robert! I’m sorry what was  your name  again? You’re moving your lips all weird†. Bob is kind of portly guy, with a very open personality and he always seems to be  wearing a sports jersey of his favorite teams. He spoke with a muffled almost nasally  accent, which immediately pegged him as a deaf man. While our rapport was great at  first, we quickly found the language barrier and things became a bit awkward. While  I  could understand most of what he said, and he could read lips incredibly well, he  couldn’t  understand most of what I said. It was then when I decided to learn American  Sign Language. At the end of the semester I switched my major (again). I started by  first  learning a few  basic American signs like dog or apple. I would stay up for hours   at  night practicing with  both hands going through each letter of the alphabet   multiple  times. When I drove or walked through a store, I habitually practiced spelling  out  each of the words I saw. I would practice  every sign I knew and I would Google what  the sign was for specific  words I thought I  needed to know. I did this all while I was  waiting for spring classes to start. When the semester began I went through the motions of buying books and  school  supplies, then finally I attended my first ASL class. It was a pretty strange  experience  since I had never taken a language course up until that point. There were  two interpreters  there helping the instructor turn this 3-D language into something  audible for the class to  understand. I was instantly sucked in and terrified at the same  time. I was mesmerized by  the interpreters skill to understand everything being  signed and their seamless ability to make the switch between the two languages. I was  terrified because they were going to  leave after only two days. After that it was going  to be ALL sign Language, so naturally me  and many of the other students  felt  panicked. Although, after the interpreters left I felt this  strange surge of  confidence, I knew this was my calling and it wasn’t going to let it slip  by. I asked every question in the book, I was always the first to raise my hand and  very soon I became noticed by the other students, because instead of asking the  teacher  questions about what sign they should use, they would ask me. The least  qualified person. I saw this as an opportunity to learn, so I would ask the teacher  for  them. After the fastest 3 months of my life I walked from that class  now  conversationally fluent in a new  language. One that didn’t use sound to  communicate an idea, but instead pictures. After passing my first class with flying colors, I gave my neighbor a visit  and  needless to sign (see what I did there) he was blown away. We signed for hours  and  eventually we had to move our conversation to his garage, because it was getting  so dark we couldn’t even see  what we were talking about. He taught me more about  the language in that one moment of us  hanging out than anything I had learned in  my 3 months of being in class. He had shown  me so many different nuances, slang, and inside jokes deaf people used that were part of  the culture, things that simply couldn’t be taught in a classroom setting. This is when it dawned on me  my passion for  language could become a career, learning sign language stopped being  about my  neighbor and soon became about what I could do with my future. When summer came around and class registration opened again, I snatched the  first ASL 2 class I saw and got prepared. Class started and shortly after we finally met  our  new instructor, I noticed right away she was hearing. This somewhat disappointed  me, but  her background was impressive, she had been an interpreter for over 13 years  and had  been involved with the deaf community for even longer. She quickly noticed  my skill  level and took special attention to me. We would sign before and after class,  discussing  different options about interpretation careers and how she got to where she is today.  I still miss her, and I’ll cherish the time I spent in her class. I am now  currently in the next level of ASL Crafton has to offer.  This journey to  literacy in a new  language has changed the way I think and live my life  completely. It’s been proven  that learning a new language literally changes the way you  think.   I now know this to  be true for having experienced it first hand. It creates new  connections, it opens doors  and shows you parts of yourself and the world you might not  have known were there  before.