I Survived My First Day of Classes!

Just wanted to let ya'll know that I survived my first day of classes!!

Here are a few of us "Speechies" just before our first class!
(From L-R: Me, Heather, Jill, Jackie)

What signs have you learned today?

Hello!!! I am loving Washington, DC and Gallaudet University. This is a totally new experience that I'm not sure is easy to comprehend unless you are here living it. This week has been Graduate School Orientation (GSO) all day from Monday-Friday. We have had lots of lectures, speakers and gatherings to get to know the campus, school politics, and each other! We have mainly met in the large group of First-Year Graduate Students with one day devoted to Departmental orientation.
This picture on the on top is of a few girls in my program (Speech-language Pathology) and one girl from Audiology. This is on the pond that is outside our dorm (Carlin Hall). There are ducks that live in this pond! The picture on underneath is my dorm!

I did not take pictures of us sitting in lectures (mainly because those wouldn't be informative to you nor exciting) but I tried to take photos of more fun activities this week. Just as a note, some of these photos have been taken from friends here!
We decided to break out my Nintendo Wii and celebrate on-campus living by playing Wii Sports together on Tuesday night. We had a lot of fun!!! It was a nice ice-breaker to get to know one another!
We have also had most of our meals together (mostly in American Sign Language...very little spoken English ever on campus!) I have learned an incredible amount of American Sign Language (ASL) in the last week and feel MUCH more comfortable on campus and meeting people. I have made many friends (hearing, deaf, and hard of hearing).




I'm not sure that I've told many people, but my program (and many other programs) are moving to a new building this week!! We are VERY excited to have such nice accommodations! It is called the James Lee Sorenson Language and Communication Center.


A few of us have been out around in Washington, DC! We visited the National Mall, National Archives Museum, and just walked around town! We have had a lot of fun. I'm not sure that I need to describe what is happening in all the photos or who everyone is, but here is a collage of my fun activities this week and weekend!


Classes begin Monday. I have an 8am class every weekday this semester which will be quite an adjustment. Hopefully I can figure out how to wake up my brain so early in the morning.

I truly love being here so far. What a crazy experience!! I will try to update ya'll as much as possible. I hope to take more photos (and have more fun) while also getting a great education!






I miss everyone a lot!

Hello from Washington DC!!

Hello everyone! My parents and I successfully drove the 6 hour trip from our house to Gallaudet University on Friday. Thankfully we had a Garmin GPS to help us navigate the long drive and tell us exactly where to turn. (My sense of direction is lacking, so a GPS is a very good tool!) We stayed at the Kellogg Conference Center on campus on Friday night. It is a very great place to stay and very close to my dorm. We ventured out into DC only once to grab dinner at Union Station. What a busy, chaotic metro station! (Schools and Universities are moving students in this weekend)



We moved into Carlin Hall (my dorm) on Saturday morning and met up with my new roommate. Her name is Desiree and she is VERY nice. I think our personalities will fit together nicely. She is from Nevada and has many degrees already. She is here at Gallaudet University (henceforth known as GU) to attain two more degrees in Deaf Education. She has worked as an interpreter for a while, which I find to be very helpful since I still do not feel comfortable with my signing level.
My parents did not have much time to hang out and enjoy the campus on Saturday because of the long drive back to North Carolina. It was very emotional for my mom (and I think my dad, too. He hides it better.). We had a lot of fun together and they made it home safely after stopping in for dinner with my brother in Raleigh on the way home.

Her parents took us to Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Staples once my parents had left. We stocked up on all the little things that she and I could not fit into our luggage. She only had a few suitcases since she and her parents flew here (the suitcase laws inhibit bringing too much for school). Her parents are staying in DC until Tuesday morning to tour around and see the hot spots.

Walking around on campus is still a bit unsettling considering I do not speak the language here very well. I have also noticed that I tend to freeze up when someone signs to me. I need to learn to just sign a few things to them to make them slow down and help me out. I will get plenty of practice living on campus. I'm excited to learn such a beautiful language, I just wish I could download the language into my brain for faster results!!

I said bye to several of my friends this week which made it seem much more real. It was hard saying bye to my boyfriend and other friends in Chapel Hill and realize that they are starting classes back at UNC and I will not be there. I will always be a Tar Heel at heart.

I found out my mailing address! It is a box on campus, but I'm not sure yet where it is. I hope they will tell me Monday when Graduate School Orientation begins.

Melissa Perryman
Gallaudet University
#358
800 Florida Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002-3695

Just copy that exact address to anything you need to send me!

I will begin Graduate School Orientation Monday morning. It will last all week long with classes starting the following week. I'm really excited to begin such a challenging adventure. I know my family is a bit worried that I will not fit in (I'm a minority here and do not speak the language yet) but I'm strong enough to survive. These first few months will be daunting, but I learn quickly so I know I can adapt and have fun too!

Also, I'm pretty sure I have one of the best views of Washington DC from my window! I am so thrilled to be living in a big city! I can see the National Cathedral, Washington Monument, GU football field, GU baseball fields, several major buildings of GU, Robert F. Kennedy Stadium (where the Redskins played until 1997 and now the Washington Nationals and DC United teams play!), and the beautiful landscape of surrounding DC.

Welcome to my Journal!

Hello all! Welcome to my new online journal. For those who remember, I kept a blog (short for web log) during summer 2007 throughout my journey in Europe (click here to see it). I really enjoyed letting everyone know what I was doing without having to spend oodles of money to call each family member and friend or stress my parents out by having them update everyone. Knowing the ease and flexibility of using a website as a journal it just makes sense for me to start a new one as I begin a new chapter in my life.

As many of you may know, I just graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on May 11, 2008. I had a whirlwind 4 years of undergraduate schooling and playing with a nice NCAA Men's Basketball Championship thrown in there (GO HEELS!). I still don't quite believe that I'm not returning there in a few weeks to start another round of linguistics and communication studies classes. Maybe when I drive up to a different school it will all hit me. So you may be wondering (or perhaps you already know) what's next for this bright-eyed, educated college graduate. I've typically heard the question phrased, "So where are you going to work now?" Well...I did work this summer at one of the best jobs I've ever had (Audiology of the Sandhills...thank you Kate!!), but that is not where I'll be this fall. I'm taking the other road (possibly the road less traveled?) to graduate school. I just can't seem to face the real world yet. I trekked through a lengthy application process with several schools in North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington DC but I decided upon the one that not many people have heard of: Gallaudet University. I quote the school's website: "Gallaudet University is the world leader in liberal education and career development for deaf and hard-of-hearing undergraduate students." That seems interesting, huh? They have a phenomenal graduate program, undergraduate program, secondary school, and elementary school, all designed around the deaf and hard-of-hearing. You're thinking, "But Melissa, you're a hearing person." Well, luckily, I realized this early on and found out that they take some hearing students too.

The next question always follows, "So, you know sign language?" Well, no. More accurately, I'm not fluent by any means. I took a beginners American Sign Language course at Durham Technical Community College this past Spring (for no college credit) and learned the basics (just enough to make me not look like an idiot). I should be taking an American Sign Language (ASL) class this fall while taking my masters classes. I hope to be fluent (or just pretty daggone great) by the time I graduate.

So what am I going to graduate school for? I will be earning my Masters of Science in Speech-Language Pathology. My undergraduate majors were Linguistics and Communication Studies. I'm excited and nervous to be taking on such a great adventure, but I'm super excited.

The question that everyone wants to ask, but only family members will ask (most especially, my father): "How are you going to pay for a private school, graduate education?" This is where I really feel blessed. I spent many days pondering how I could get to my dream graduate school but not end up several thousand dollars in debt. I applied for a few scholarships and grants when I found out I was accepted to Gallaudet not thinking much would come out of it. Well, BOY was I wrong! The Presbyterian Women of my church here in Southern Pines, Brownson Memorial Presbyterian Church, have honored me with 2 fantastic scholarships and I also received a U.S. Federal Grant that will pay ALL OF MY TUITION!!!! This grant is called the Pediatric Aural Rehabilitation Emphasis and only a select few graduate students receive it each year. My graduate schooling and work afterwards will focus primarily on children with aural rehabilitation (hearing rehab). This still sounds too good to be true! I pray every night that this is not just a dream, but reality. I feel SO blessed and honored to be the recipient of such wonderful, generous offerings.

Now that I have pinned down a bit of background, I hope you're intrigued. The title of this blog is a quote from Helen Keller, a woman I have done many reports and presentations on in middle school (funny how that works out, huh?).

I have lots of information about Gallaudet on the right side. There are also several links to other important websites and news on the right side. Commenting is welcome and encouraged. You can leave comments by click on on the work "COMMENTS" just beneath each post. You do not have to log in, sign in, create an account or anything to leave me a message. You should leave your name though, so that I know who is writing me! Once you click the COMMENTS button, click OTHER and fill out your name. If this all seems to complicated, just email me ( melissa.perryman@gallaudet.edu ). I love having messages waiting in my inbox!

I will update as I see fit and can find time. I will try to include lots of pictures so you can imagine being on campus with me!