Deaf in DC: A Memoir

28. Starting Graduate School

114 28 Starting Graduate School MY MAIN GOAL FOR COMING TO AMERICA WAS GETTING a degree that would allow me to teach deaf children. The BA degree in history and psychology had helped me prepare to get admission to Gallaudet ’s education department for an MA in deaf education. This was my ultimate dream: to become the first deaf Indian to hold this degree. I did some research and learned that only two Indian people—both hearing—had received this degree from Gallaudet. The Banerjees—father and son—had come to Gallaudet in 1892 and 1925 respectively. Both of them later became principals of the Calcutta School for the Deaf. The graduate school at Gallaudet was housed in the Mary Thornberry (MT) Building, a beautifully designed, round building that housed both the education and audiology departments. It was an island on Gallaudet’s campus. The undergraduate students went to the MT Building only to get their hearing aids fixed or for classes in communication. Otherwise, it was a hearing place as all audiology majors and most education majors were hearing. There were no deaf teachers in either department. Getting admission to both departments was not easy. Since Gallaudet offered a full scholarship through a government grant to all admitted students, the competition was pretty tight and the quality of students selected was high. As a foreign student, I didn’t qualify for the scholarship, but the grant from Gallaudet covered most of my expenses. I was sure that I could manage, despite the fact that visits to other schools for observations and work as teacher’s aide was required and finally a whole semester for teaching that would curtail my part-time work. There were only four deaf students among the thirty-five students. One of the deaf students, Mark, didn’t know signs and could communicate using a telephone; therefore we didn’t consider him deaf. Pretty soon, I found out how different the graduate school was from s t a r t i n g g r a d ua t e s c h o o l 115 the undergraduate. I thought I was going to sail through the graduate school. Wasn’t I smart and didn’t I make the dean’s list all the time? However I was wrong. I got my first C in an hour-test in the curriculum development class and was shocked. I told my classmates that graduate school was hard. But they only laughed. All students from other universities said that the Gallaudet graduate school was not as hard as their undergraduate school. This hit me hard. The BA program at Gallaudet didn’t prepare us even for the Gallaudet graduate school. The tests and other assignments that got me an A or a high B in undergraduate school got me a low B or even C in graduate school. Some teachers were understanding and gave the deaf students higher grades than expected. But one teacher was firm and kept handing out Cs instead of understanding that we were in a different league. We Gallaudet students began to complain about discrimination against deaf students. Dr. Delgado, the dean of graduate school, who was always very sympathetic to deaf students, even held an inquiry. However, the professor came out clean when he submitted our work and compared it with the work of the other students. This “hearing ” acted as a wake-up call to us. We began to study harder and apply ourselves. Soon we were competing with our hearing peers and doing better than some of them. As I look back at my four years in Gallaudet’s undergraduate school, I feel I wasted a lot of time sitting in classrooms. There were no challenges. The professors who challenged us—Dr. Schuchman, for example—had only four or five students in their classes. The teachers who let us sail had their classes full. All the students knew which teacher was “easy” and which one was “hard,” and for some reason they picked the teachers that helped them sail through without doing much work. One example of a teacher who had high expectations and forced us to think was Mr. Mio. He taught history. The problem with Mr. Mio was he signed very slowly. Despite being the football coach and also ice hockey coach where fluent communication was essential, he never really learned to sign well. I liked him because he was the first teacher I could understand well. This was...