Transcripts of Chris Driscoll

What about your use of pagers as a technology, of instant messaging? Do you use that a lot, do you find it of great benefit for communication? But also for reading and writing skills that you exchange using a pager. 

Well, I think I have two things I'll say about that, the pagers are beneficial. And in some ways they're not though. They're great because we have communication, you don't have to drive, you know, just to stop by someone's house and say hi, I can just use my pager and e-mail, save time, save gas save money. People can find me easier than ever before, you know if they want to know something just page me. Like say, "Oh, I'm here at wherever" And they can come find me. The ways in which it's not beneficial, it's, in some ways it's kind of ruined deaf culture. Deaf clubs used to be a real focus for communities, and no one had deaf pagers, so everyone had to come together physically to share ideas, to communicate. You know communication was obviously much easier in sign language. No one really thought about pagers, everyone was just thinking about getting together, just gathering together and having a good time. Now it seems like that gathering is gone now, now that everybody has pagers, "Oh, well you know where I am, you know where to find this person, just page them" You can just page them. So no one thinks about coming together anymore. No one goes to deaf clubs, like "Oh, we don't need them" Maybe some people get together but usually the older folks. The young people just go off on their own, they have their pagers, they know where to find each other. So in some ways it has hurt us, it hasn't been beneficial, some ways it's great. 

As it relates to English... Sometimes you don't have to type full English words, you can just type the letter U, for the word "you." That would take too long, typing out whole words sometimes, so we just use U, the letter U, for the word "you". And so there's all these abbreviations that we use now. So I don't know if that's helped my English or not. But it's all about speed now. It's all about hurry up, text as fast as you can, communicate as fast as you can, nobody wants to have to spell "I am going to the" and so forth. You don't need to do that, just put "Store" yeah, come on, and then it's just a lot faster that way. So that's how those things work. I was just thinking of one quick example of what you're talking about. You remember last month when we were trying to set up a time for all of the ASL teachers to meet to have our photograph taken together? Remember that? And I'm pretty sure it took 40 e-mails to get that one 5 minute time nailed down. And I just remember that you sent one message from your pager that said something like "Sure, I can be there, does anyone want to go to Bob Evans afterwards to chat?" And that's that thing you're talking about, all this communication, but you were saying "Can we actually just meet together?" And I don't think anyone responded to that, I don't think that... Yes, that's right. Yeah, I got a couple responses, and then they ended up saying they couldn't go. But yeah, you're right. Yeah, so I guess that's, I like to keep things short. From my pager. A lot of people send me messages and stuff and especially from Gallaudet, you have to have a pager if you go to Gallaudet. Well it's not required by the school, but it's obviously a lot better for you. 

You know if you go to Gallaudet you're going to see everyone, everyone's heads are going to be down when you're walking around campus. Everyone is looking at their pager, texting away. So everybody is typing messages, keep it short and sweet. I just want people to be able to understand what I'm saying, you know. Sometimes I forget to include hearing people as well. I'm sure people wonder about that too right? Sometimes they wonder, you know, what my sentence is saying? If you're deaf you might be able to understand what I spelled out in English. But for a hearing person who might not get our lingo just yet, they might not understand what we're saying. I have a question about something that you said earlier. When you noted that your teachers were more interested in teaching you how to hear, than they were in teaching you how to learn. Do you find that same tendency going on today, and are deaf students exposed to that same kind of emphasis? That's a good question. I'm not sure what the real answer is to that, but I think I found at least at my, the school that I went to, there's been lot of emphasis on homework and English. In Middle School, they used palm. It's called palm, it's really fantastic, but they give those out to everyone at the school. And I think they're trying to motivate students to do their homework by giving them these things, technology, palm pilots, so they can use those. So they can keep their schedules on there, they can mark down their homework and so forth. They have to see "Oh yeah, I have to do my science homework." Or whatever. So that's really cool, they've included technology in that way. Obviously when I was in school all we had were the FM systems. 

And, I always wanted to just forget about that stuff. I just wanted to learn. We had, see in my time, we only had two or three deaf teachers, and I was always very happy in their classes, I didn't have to just focus on English, I could sign back and forth with them. But when I was in a class with a hearing teacher it was awful. We had to put these FM sets back on, and they would say "Oh, if you don't have your FM system, you're in trouble." And I would say "I don't care." Obviously they didn't care about whether I was learning, they were just focusing on my ability to hear and to speak. You have mentioned about going to Gallaudet, but you haven't actually talked now about going to Gallaudet. You started, right, you went to a Junior College at St. Petersburg? Right. So then you must have gone off to Gallaudet at some point, and so I guess with this interview, particularly what happens with... I took a year off, yeah. with all your communication and literacy skills at Gallaudet, and technology? But also reading and writing in English, then also your sign language skills.   Well at Junior College, the teacher obviously encouraged us to get better at reading and writing English. But there was still working on our English skills even as we signed. So I took a year and a half off before going to Gallaudet. And that was just crazy, because everyone signed, I was just blown away by it. And that was the time I really found my true identity for myself. I understood at that time that I was deaf, I understood who I was as a person. And I was told, "Don't let other people put you down for being deaf." You know, show people that you can do it, don't give in to the oppression. And so that's something that I learned while I was there, and I wanted to show people who I was. 

And as I took classes, I took tons of classes to be very honest. Some just for the heck of it, I wanted to get the credits and graduate. I graduated with 190 credits, which was way too many, because I just took whatever classes I wanted, I wasn't really ready to graduate. I wasn't ready to go into the real world. I was trying to avoid graduating. I liked staying at Gallaudet, I wanted to stay. I had my friends, my community. My advisor said "Look, you really need to graduate, you really need to get out of there." And so I continued taking some classes though, I took deaf, I took ASL classes, I took deaf culture classes, I took whatever I wanted. The classes that I took the most though were the American Sign Language classes. You know, I wasn't sure if I wanted to major or minor in it. My academic advisors said "No way man, your times up you haven't graduated yet, and you haven't even declared a major yet." And so he kept telling me my time was up. And I said "Look I haven't decided yet, I know, I know, I'm trying to." So he really forced me to think about the real world. So I was seeing what courses I needed, what I could get finished with the quickest, and it looked like I could do deaf studies. And my academic advisor said "No, no, save that for your Masters degree, just focus on what classes will get you done the quickest and you can get out of here." Well you know, I, "If you just take this one class you can graduate." Well, you know, I my academic advisor was just furious, because I decided to keep taking these ASL classes instead of just taking another class. 

But through all of this I had to keep thinking "What am I going to do when I get out of here, what am I going to do?" And so I kept taking these classes, but it was kind of funny, The last year I was in college there, I was really ready to leave Gallaudet, I was done, I was ready to head home, I only had one course left. So that close to being graduated But I kept putting it off and putting it off, because I knew everyone at Gallaudet, it's what I was comfortable with. I had enough time there to get involved. Back in Florida, in comparing Florida and Gallaudet, that would be just a real shock. Back in Florida, I only had, it took me a couple days, once I finally moved back to Florida, to get comfortable again where I grew up. And then going back to Gallaudet after that, it would always take me a couple days to get comfortable being back there again, you know what I mean? So, you know, it was, if I arrived, the first day of classes were always a big shock to me. Trying to get back into the scheme of things and everything. So that's the way it's always been, til that time. Last year I was there... I was ready to start my class and the teacher said "You know what, you're late, too late, this is your last year and you're still here, forget about it." You know, I said "No, this is my last year." And he said "No." The first week went by, second week went by, and I finally decided it was time to get out. So I just played around. I was there at Gallaudet my last, a couple more weeks went by. You know, it was the fourth week of classes, and I got a letter, that said "You have to leave Gallaudet in 48 hours." And it was that time I finally made the decision, I called home, and I decided to drop out, and my mother just freaked out. Just freaked out, she was berserk. And I said "Look, I'm really sorry" And she said "No you have to graduate, you still can go through your graduation ceremony. All you have to do is just go through Summer school, just take this one class, that's all you have to do. My mom wanted me to stay and do it that way. And everyone at Gallaudet said "No no no no no" You know, I said, "Look, I can't deal with the Gallaudet people." So she said fine, do whatever you're going to do. So...  So my mom called Gallaudet, and they worked something out where I could stay. 

So they called me in, into the office, and I had to sit with the Dean And the Dean said that he would support what my mother's wishes were. Which were for me to stay in school, and the only way for me to do that, they said they would support me, they would talk to my teachers or whatever, but they said "You have to graduate." I said alright. They said "You can't leave with one course, we're not going to let you, that's just silly. So you're going to stay, and you're going to graduate." So I ended up staying and I did graduate. So looking back I'm really thankful for my parents getting me through that time, and encouraging me to finish graduating. I was the only child, so it was, my parents eyes were on me pretty heavy. I was always wondering "Why is everyone looking at me? Why is... My mom's always there, my dad's always there" Everywhere I went they were looking out for me. That's the end of our time. Oh is that? You told marvelous stories, marvelous stories, and your signing is so beautiful. Don't you want one more? (Laughter) So now you know why he's such a good ASL teacher. I can imagine how good of a teacher you are, I can imagine you in front of a classroom. Because I was fascinated with the story as you were going, so thank you very much. Thank you. We have a few more questions. One thing is that way back in the beginning this last story, your parents appeared, back in the last story. And back in the beginning I guess they were there. But are there things you want to say about your parents' impact and influence on your literacy skills, your learning, your reading, writing, communication? How do your parents fit in with this picture?  Well my parents were divorced when I was one. My mother started dating another man, and my mother went through a really hard time. You know, I was the only child at the time and I was deaf, and when we found out that I had an infection in my eardrum, my mother took me to a doctor. But we didn't have a lot of money. So I was, it was just my mom and I, and we just didn't have much. So my mom's mom, my grandmother on that side didn't have much either. 

So it was a really difficult life when I was younger. My mother was very focused on me. We didn't get a lot of toys and things like that, we didn't get to have, we went to the doctor, and that was what we had to do. To figure out what was wrong, how it, figure out my deafness and the infection. And her focus was just to make sure that I was Ok. Only my mother got really interested in learning sign language, and this happened because she had met another deaf woman. A lady who lived in our hometown. And my mother saw this, and was really impacted by this person, really felt after talking to this person, that sign language was really important. And that it was Ok to sign, it was Ok that I was deaf. Later on my mother remarried, I was four years old when they remarried.  My family was always very supportive of each other, we were very tight family. My aunt, my dad, my uncle, everyone. Everyone started to learn sign language, and so we started to have our own little community of signers. I even had, a friend of the family, the deaf lady, started teaching my mother sign language, and we passed it on, and obviously I was involved in it as well. I remember when I was only six or seven, standing up in front of the classroom with all the students there, and teaching them some sign language, teaching my peers sign language, just short things. And so my family was always really motivated. They were always there for me, they were always able to communicate. I think that was really key, communication was key for us. 

So there was a lot of emphasis on communication and learning sign, and now even now, most of my family knows sign language. My cousins, all my cousins, all my aunts that I can think of, my parents. They've always been very supportive of sign language. Even now they still sign. And we did that because we were always a tight family. During family reunions, Christmas, Thanksgiving, we would always get together and hang out. And we were not the kind of family to just sit there. We were always up, we were doing stuff, people were trying to learn sign language and communicate. I never had to just depend on my mother to interpret for me, I always have lots of people in my family that I could talk to. I could ask my aunt "What's this person saying?" I could ask my cousin "What's this person saying?" So it was a very comfortable environment for me. I never felt like I was left out, I never felt like, "Oh man, I just have to go sit and eat and be around my family." I didn't want to have to go and just suffer through spending time with my family. I always wanted to be involved. So they were all interested in learning sign language. So I was very glad about that now, I can go to my aunt, I can talk to my aunt, I can communicate with her, I can talk to my cousin, communicate just fine. Even if I'm not there, it's been a couple months now, it's been six years since I've been in Gallaudet. You know I moved here 2 years ago, to Columbus. So I guess that's been 8 years, so I haven't seen most of my family in 8 years. And they still remember sign language, and I'm really impressed with that, I'm always impressed with that. We have a lot of family values, family values are very linked, not too linked to literacy, to written English, in that way. But we have a lot of other family values. That we cherish.