I recently watched the movie "27 Dresses" for the first time. I know...I'm way behind the times, but hey, I've been a bit busy earning my MSW and starting a new career and all that. Anyway, I was struck by a few lines in the beginning: "Mozart found his calling at age five, composing his first minuet. Picasso discovered his talent for painting when he was nine. Tiger woods swung his first club well before his second birthday." While I will never be as famous as those mentioned (in passing, why are they all men???), I, too, realized my future at a young age. I was six years old when I came home from school and announced to my parents that "there is a girl in my class who can't hear. She talks with her hands and I want to learn to talk to her." This resulted in a family meeting, because the school indeed offered the opportunity to learn sign language, but it was in an afterschool club. The thought of a first grader staying afterschool and taking the late bus home was scary for my parents. My greatgrandparents had deeper fears...what if deafness were catching? Eventually everyone's fears must have been put at ease, because I joined sign language club.
They say that the younger you learn a language, the easier it is to pick it up. Whether it was my age, my enthusiasm, or maybe that I am a visual learner, learning sign came easily to me. Of course, I had my Deaf friend--and in later grades, friends--to practice with, and an interpreter in class to watch. In second grade there were no Deaf students in my class. I was heartbroken, but continued with sign language club. My mother contacted the school, and from third grade all the way through middle school I was in the class that the Deaf students were mainstreamed in. I had found my niche.
You remember the obligatory paper that we all had to write: "What I Want to be When I Grow Up"? I wrote mine about becoming an interpreter. From elementary school, I knew that I wanted to work with the Deaf. Of course, I had the times that I wanted to be a ballerina, a gymnast, an archaeologist (except that I don't do well in the heat), but it always came back to being an interpreter, or a teacher for the Deaf. When the time came to go to college, though, SUNY Albany no longer offered a major for sign language interpreters. I ended up getting a scholarship to SUNY Plattsburgh and became a Speech-Language-Hearing Impaired Education major...I was going to be a Speech-Language Pathologist for Deaf kids. Except that in my first few semesters we spent less than one class talking about deafness--and it was from a very medical perspective...about how to cure it. We didn't discuss the rich culture and language that I had come to know through my interactions with my Deaf friends. While the profession of a Speech-Language Pathologist is an important one, it just wasn't what I wanted to do. I left Plattsburgh and applied to Flagler College for Deaf Education. I was accepted, but I didn't receive enough financial aid to afford to go.
So, I answered an ad in the newspaper to be a substitute teaching assistant for BOCES. When I turned in my application, I mentioned that I was fluent in sign language. I was able to use one of the Teachers of the Deaf as a reference. Suddenly, not only was I a substitute teaching assistant, but also a substitute interpreter. Within a few months I interviewed for, and received, a part-time position interpreting in the elementary school that I had first learned to sign in.
The following school year I became employed full-time as an educational interpreter. I worked in the schools for eight years. During that time I earned my national Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf certification. This opened up more doors for me, and the year that I was expected to interpret for 5 students with vastly different needs--American Sign Language, oral transliteration, and Signed English--all at one time, because they were in the same grade, I decided that it was time for me to move on. I became a freelance interpreter and began working for three interpreting agencies in the area, and occasionally agencies outside of the area.
As a freelance interpreter, I worked in many different settings. In one week I might be working at a statewide conference, in a college classroom, at a concert, at a birth, at a funeral...sometimes driving hours to arrive at an assignment. I had many wonderful experiences...and some not so wonderful. I had to interpret for a doctor telling someone that a loved one would not survive the night. As heart wrenching as that was, I knew it was better for the person to see it in their native language than to read it on a piece of paper written by a nurse.
I enjoyed interpreting. I loved doing something different everyday. I liked the fact that I didn't have a set schedule, that I didn't sit in a cubicle or behind a desk. However, over the twelve years that I worked freelance, there were many frustrations, too. I wanted to help Deaf people to advocate for their rights. Especially working in the mental health setting. As an interpreter, however, I had to remain neutral. While cultural mediation (bridging the gap between Deaf and hearing cultures) is part of our job, there is only so much that an interpreter can do without stepping out of role. There were times that I wondered if a Deaf person was admitted as an inpatient simply because a psychiatrist did not understand Deaf culture, despite the cultural mediation I provided while interpreting. There were other times that Deaf people were released, and I wondered if it was because the process of procuring and using an interpreter was too expensive and cumbersome. But I couldn't say anything. It finally got to be too much to put up with.
I returned to college to pursue a human services degree. Then I enrolled in an undergraduate social work program. Originally my intent was to be a counseling social worker for people with disabilities, especially for those who are Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing. As I continued with my social work course work, I realized that my heart lies in advocacy. When I went on to my MSW (Master of Social Work) program, I adopted a macro concentration, rather than clinical.
I still work as an interpreter occasionally. I have some favorite assignments that occur every year that I don't want to give up. However, on a daily basis I work as a social worker. I view myself as a social worker, an advocate and an interpreter. I don't see them as being mutually exclusive. Upon occasion I find myself in a position to advocate for a Deaf person's right to have an interpreter. In those instances, of course, I would not accept that particular interpreting assignment. In general, however, I have found a wonderful balance between my worlds. I still get to work with Deaf people--sometimes as a social worker and sometimes as an interpreter.
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