Pride

One of the things about having a condition such as TCS or something else which means that you are at a disadvantage compared to the average person is that you have to learn when to accept help when it is offered. This can be very hard for some people including myself, it wasn't until my final year of high school that I finally accepted what I had been offered all along which was to do my exams away from the main exam hall and with some extra time. It was only with a lot of persuasion and my chemistry teacher calling me a fool (because anyone else would take it) that I finally gave in. The same for my first year at uni, I was very sceptical about their offer of a note taker amongst other things but as I've been told many times things like that are put in place to level the playing field and even if  I don't use the note taker's notes every time they act as a very useful safety net.

But on the other hand I do not like people who actively look for "freebies" just because they have something wrong with them. I read an article in which a deaf person described how they got free tickets to a show or something because they said to the manager that they were deaf, I think this is totally inappropriate and this behaviour should not be encouraged. I'm all for equality but not to an extent where people abuse the system.

Jobs

I have to say that as bad as the job market is it is even worse if you have to narrow your options. I would quite like to get a part time job for the experience but when you take away shop assistant, waiter or any other job that requires you to be face to face with a large number of people then there is not much left. You might ask why I have narrowed my options, it is due to having TCS. All of these jobs require you to be able to listen, communicate effectively and deal with the public and I do not feel as if I could do any of these well enough. I am a good listener but when it comes to a noisy shop environment it would be difficult and if you get a customer lacking in patience then they might get annoyed if they had to repeat themselves. As for communicating effectively due to my cleft palate even people who know me and have been around me for a long time have difficulty understanding what I say sometimes and I even carried around a notebook for uni in order to write anything down if people didn't understand me (I have since realised that my phone is just as good). But this would not be very practical in a job situation. Finally dealing with the public as I spoke about in my entry-"Stop and stare" people especially children can be quite cruel with staring and even comments so I would be nervous working in a shop when it is likely that I'll have at least one incident of this.

Thanks for reading.

Hearing damage

^Awesome song by Thom Yorke^

So again sorry for the lack of updates especially now that I've had over 200 views, this blog as definitely exceeded my expectations.

One of the things I feel I should talk about is how TCS affects people's hearing, again it probably differs with each person but it is something that is clearly associated with having TCS.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend a while back, I commented on how I felt bad for a girl in the year below us (who my friend was friends with) who was completely deaf and had to use sign language because she would never know what music was and my friend's response was along the lines of "you can't miss something if you never had it". This is true but I still feel bad for people who are not as lucky as me, I am eternally grateful for the fact that I can put on my hearing aid every morning and hear, which lets me enjoy music, play guitar etc.

Which is not to say my hearing aid doesn't have limitations, whilst on holiday I was again reminded how uncomfortable loud environments can be, my understanding is that people with normal hearing can tune out background noise and hence adapt to loud environments like restaurants but for me its just a big sea of sound.  Another limitation is that I cannot tell which direction a sound is coming from just by hearing it, for example if somebody shouts for me to come to them in my house I have to ask them which room they are in as I cannot physically tell.

Well that's all for now, thanks for reading.

Back in black

Sorry for the lack of updates, I felt I needed a break from this, I also couldn't update it whilst on holiday.

So anyway I'm back slightly more suntanned and definitely more relaxed than I was before. This is a short update and when I'm recovered from my long trip home I will post something more relevant.

Thanks for reading.