We came up from the depths of the garage into the sun-washed lobby. I remember when the building was naught but a skeleton with bones of I-beams and rebar stretching into the sky. Now, I was waiting to be escorted to another building. Where Julie and I would guest lecture an aural rehabilitation class.
It would be the first time in 23 years I stepped foot inside a Northeastern University classroom.
We’d been invited to speak to budding audiologists, to share our hearing loss stories and give them ideas of how to help future patients. It was kind of like Jeopardy; we’d give them the answers before the patient would ask the questions. And the “them” in this case was a different demographic than we’d ever spoken to. Not only were they all students but they were a majority hearing audience.
At least we think it was.
There was one fellow who had either aids or implants. We didn’t get close enough to check. But we did get close enough to his Roger Mic. Just not close enough. While we used the handheld mic well enough, we kept moving away from the Roger Mic that sat on the table next to the lectern. We thought we had bad hearing etiquette amongst ourselves. It appears our hypocrisy knows no bounds. Was he the only one who had a hard time hearing us? We don’t know. Because hearing loss is so often an invisible disability.
What wasn’t invisible was the tech in the classroom.
When I was gracing (disgracing?) those halls, NEU was post-blackboard but pre-projector. My teachers used a whiteboard in the stead; which were in this classroom as well. They were just behind the projector screen. Well, one of them. There was a second screen in the back of the class. A screen I didn’t use even once. My poor little brain didn’t even notice that nothing changed on said screen when we played a video. The video dropped us out of PowerPoint, but I didn’t notice the class couldn’t see the video until Dr. Laffan pointed it out.
Whoops!
Other than the two screens the classroom looked familiar. Rows of tables lined up on ascending steps just like the classrooms that held my English classes. I was so nervous though, that I didn’t take the time to bask in the dashes of familiarity. I could never have done the presentation without Julie.
And not just because I didn’t have any speech therapy growing up.
We opened the presentation with some background about our hearing loss; when it began, when we got our first aids, and then I showed off the image I put together showing levels of hearing loss, our audiograms, and the speech banana. Then I stepped back and let Julie shine. She talked about the disreputable history of speech therapy. She showed off her infotainment skillz. That’s right, they’re so good I have to use poor grammar to explain them!
The ability to distill a complex topic and do so with humor is something we both excel at. I was proud to stand next to Julie as she took center stage doing just that. She painted a dire picture of how speech therapy was, but highlighted the changes which have taken place over the years to help relegate that direness to the dustbin. Since the class was “Introduction to Aural Rehabilitation”, and I had never had to go through any, I knew my place. This is part of how Julie and I are going to change the world: our egos can take a backseat to our work.
When we came back from a brain break, we made a joke that I finally got to talk again.
I took us into the work we’re doing here with Down the Tubes Productions, gave some examples of things hard of hearing people find challenging, and gave an outline of the many avenues we’re getting the conversation around hearing loss going. I stressed our desire to keep our work just that: centered around the conversation. Which means I asked for input, for resources, for people to not be afraid to reach out so we can help them help their patients.
We ended with plenty of time to spare. And I was visited once more by flashbacks to my own college years. Silence. Not because I wasn’t hearing anything but because no one had any questions. But like the great teacher she’s proven to be, Dr. Laffan got us started, hoping to grease the Q&A wheels for the rest of the class.
And it worked.
We took questions for quite a while. We even modelled some hearing loss strategies. We couldn’t hear the questions from the class. Even with the microphone. So we ambled amongst the class, getting closer to the questioner so we could hear. And I took a goodly number of questions myself. Including one from a kindred soul. As I made my way over to her, I saw her face ignite in a blush.
I see you, fellow introvert, I thought.
I don’t remember any of the questions, including that one. But I was warmed thinking that we got a normally quiet one to speak up. I know how hard that is. It continued the trend of engagement that we saw throughout our entire presentation. While there may not have been any questions during it, we saw nods of understanding and heard laughs of amusement as we do what we do best: make a hard topic humorous.
My alma mater
continues to improve me.
I love to give back.
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