Expectations

What did you expect to happen?

When I honestly was not entirely sure what expect. I thought I wasn’t going to cancel out enough sound for it to really effective. So, leading up to the experiment I was really doubtful that it was going to work. I was also unsure of how I was going to communicate because I was also choosing to not talk either and since I did not know American Sign Language.

What actually happened?

The noise canceling was actually effective to a point. If you were within 3ft and talking normally I could hear you alright. Anything outside that range and not yelling, like most of our English classes end up being… I mean..., I could hear but not make it out. This is all single people talking. If you add more people it gets even better. From being able to understand people from 3 ft away to it all being a jumbled mess is pretty crazy. Now for the communication I was able to point and make some weird gestures to get my point across or I could write what I wanted to say down, but that would have been too easy.

Do you feel that if you did this for longer, something about you would have changed?

I actually believe that it could change you, but first let me say that because I did not experience complete deafness that it didn’t give me the insight to how deaf people lived that I would like. With that being said, I believe that if I would have continued for a longer time it definitely would have had more of an impact on me. From the short time that I was deaf and mute, I gained some insight to how not being able to hear or talk can cause a “language barrier”, if you will, to be caused and can make communicating a lot more difficult and frustrating at times.

Would you recommend other people do what you did? Why or why not?

Yes I would, though it was not being purely deaf it still helped you get a small glimpse on how life would be if you lost some or all of your hearing, which I believe is invaluable experience because it puts in perspective how God has provided such a good condition for most of us to live in with all our senses working.