I go to RIT, which has the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) as part of our university. That means that there are thousands of people on my campus who I cannot commicate with because my sign language skills are lack.

Before going to RIT, I knew the alphabet... now I can speak in sentenses, but it's still not enough to get along in a normal conversational rate. I feel so guilty because there are thousands of people not only at RIT but in the entire Rochester area who are deaf and even though we grew up in the same country, have the same holidays, and the same cultural upbringing, they (or I) might as well be foreign. I have tons of deaf friends and we usually avoid my poor signing and stick to paper and pencil to communicate, but it sucks that I can't communicate with them the same way I do with my hearing friends.

I was never exposed to the deaf culture until college. I knew that some people were deaf, but I never understood the cultural differences. Like how they prefer you to not duck through their conversations... they'd rather you just walk and act normally. And how, when deaf kids hang out, they play like Apples to Apples or other games that don't involve speaking.

I was an Orientation Assistant this year for the first year students and my hearing group as well as my deaf friend Aaron's group of hard-of-hearing and deaf students played a game together and it was kinda chaotic. I could tell my students felt really awkward playing with the deaf kids whereas the deaf students were really open to it. I gave the instructions and since Aaron's lip reading skills didn't really work well when in large groups, one of his hard of hearing students translated for us. My students and Aarons students had to adjust to waiting until hearing the instructions in both languages to begin.

I thought it was really cool when things started to work out. But for a lot of my students, that was the last time they may ever interact with the deaf and hard-of-hearing students on campus because it does take extra effort. But, like the game, it turns out really awesome in the end.

Have any of you ever thought about the deaf culture or had experiences like mine?
What about other interaction with other cultures? Have you ever gone the extra steps to try to work with someone who wasn't like yourself.