Day of Silence

For one of the projects in my ASL class we were told to be silent for 24 hours and have a "Deaf day." We were then supposed to write about the positives and negatives of our experience and I thought that I would share my experience with you. 

This was a lot harder than I thought it would be, it was sure an adventure. When we were given the assignment I was thinking that it would be a “no problem” type of project, nope, not even close! Of course I will never fully know what it is like to be Deaf but I feel that through the experiences that I had during that 24 hours I was able to get a small understanding to what it would be like. Here are some of the positives and negatives from this project to help paint a picture of what it was like. 

Positive: 

1.  I noticed that if I didn’t want to be a part of a conversation, I didn’t need to; mentally, it was easy to step out of. I could easily tune out. I was not necessarily included in the conversation and was not contributing to the topic so I would just completely tune out. Not one person that was involved in this conversation really noticed because I wasn’t giving any sort of input, therefore they didn’t know if I was paying attention or not.
2. I completed my 24 hours of silence on a Sunday and the first activity of the day was to attend church. It was challenging because I wanted to socialize with friends there but had a hard time communicating what I was trying to say, but while the meeting was happening I felt that it was easier for me to focus. I knew it would be a tedious task to try and “talk” to my roommate next to me, I didn’t even think about it, I didn’t even try to communicate with her. My entire focus was on the speaker and what he was teaching. In this specific moment, in these couple hours of church, I felt that talking was just an unnecessary distraction and I was better off not being able to talk because I was giving my full attention to the speakers and their lessons.
3. Being silent for 24 hours gave me the opportunity to step into the shoes of a Deaf person. Although I could still hear what was going on around me I believe that not being able to respond, not knowing what is going on, not feeling included is something that a lot of Deaf people deal with. I was able to see a glimpse of what that is like. 
4. I also noticed that my language skills are more advanced than I thought. I told my roommates the day before my "day of silence" that I will probably start signing what I want to say, I know that they will not understand what I'm saying but just let me blabber on because it will help me to practice. 

Negatives: 

1. The most difficult one and obvious negative from my "day of silence" was trying to converse with the people around me. The only way that I could communicate was trying to use “charades,” typing it out on my phone, or writing it down on a piece of paper. This worked when I was involved in a one on one conversation but when in a bigger group it was not as affective. By the time I had typed something out on my phone, they had already moved on to another topic and whatever I had to say was completely irrelevant to what they were talking about.
2. When the people around me found out that I was silent for the day they did not want to put in the work to have a conversation with me. They would stand there awkwardly for a couple seconds but then say, “Well, I guess I will just talk to you tomorrow” and would completely give up on trying to talk to me. They made zero effort to try and communicate with me, they figured that I was useless and avoided the awkward situation by walking away.
3. Towards the end of the day I stopped making an effort to communicate. If I was ever in a group I silent and did not type anything out on my phone or try and act out what I wanted to say. My thought process became, “they are not going to understand me anyways.” I have been through several ASL classes and feel that I have a good handle on the language and my first instinct, almost without thinking when I cannot speak is to sign but my friends, roommates and family does not know sign language. This becomes very frustrating for both people in the conversation. It was frustrating for me because I have a way of wonderful and effective way of communicating with them but they don’t understand it. They would like nothing more than to be able to converse with me but do not have the knowledge to do so, which can also be frustrating.

I do believe that this project served its purpose in giving me a very small understanding of what it would be like to be Deaf. I learned some of the positives and negatives of having a language barrier or communication barrier and felt the frustration when people did not understand me, something that Deaf people have learned to deal with every day. All in all, I am very grateful for the experiences that I had during this project.

"I can talk with my hands, can you?"