Snap, Crackle, Pop

I heard it often growing up...the little elves from the Rice Crispies cereal commercials. I never understood the meaning behind "Snap, Crackle, Pop" until I poured a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal yesterday.

How far I have come if I can hear the snap, crackle and pop of Rice Krispies!

Anywho, we are at the tail end of fall, and I can promise you that I marched through every pile of leaves I could find on the campus of Clemson University. I wonder if the newness of the sound of leaves crinkling beneath my feet will ever be lost?

Permit me to brag a little more

Hey guys, just wanted to share a link with you profiling the winners of the Graeme-Clark scholarship that I mentioned in my last post!

http://www.cochlearamericas.com/Community/2167.asp

You can see me and the other four winners. I'll have a chance to meet them in San Antonio this upcoming weekend and am definitely looking forward to that opportunity!

I'll be sure to post back here with details from the trip and possibly even some pictures!

...and EIGHT months later...

Hard to believe it's been over eight months since I last posted! (I can certainly imagine a chorus of AMENs of the "Anonymous" poster(s) who keep leaving me comments wondering when I'm going to update my blog!)

Lots of things have happened since, but I won't bore you with the minor details. Perhaps the one most pertinent to this blog is the news I received recently from Cochlear, Inc., the maker of my particular brand of implant. About a year ago, I applied for a financial scholarship from Cochlear that was open only to those who wear their implant. Much to my enjoyment, I opened my mailbox before Christmas break to find a package for me, from Cochlear, informing me that I was selected as one of the recipients of the Graeme Clark scholarship. In addition to receiving financial assistance upon the completion of each of the remaining years of my time at Clemson, Cochlear is also flying me AND a guest to a Cochlear Celebration to be held in San Antonio this year! Of course, my guest will be none other than my terrific Mom!

In San Antonio, I'll get to take part in celebrating the 25 year anniversary of the invention of the Nucleus® cochlear implant. At this celebration will be the inventor of the multi-channel cochlear implant, Professor Graeme Clark (who is also the namesake of the scholarship I have received). I look forward to meeting him and having a chance to thank him for the contribution he has made to my life! Be sure to check back on the blog in late February, hopefully I'll have some pictures from the trip that I can post. Of course, my thanks go out to Cochlear, Inc. and Professor Clark for continuing to impact my life in more ways than one.

With that said, I will try my best to start posting to the blog on at least a sporadic basis over the next few months. We'll see what happens!

And finally, in keeping with an age-old blogging tradition, I gotta say Go Tigers! Basketball is still doing well, and our top-ranked baseball team are about to take the field at Doug Kingsmore. Sounds like spring is on the way!

Sounds of Spring

Well, this is my first spring with an implant, and like the Fall and Winter before it, the implant has changed my idea of what the season "sounds" like. I just thought I would share some of the things I've heard...

- Aluminum baseball bats at Doug Kingsmore Stadium making a nice pinging noise when contact is made with the ball (which is quite often for the top-10 ranked Tigers, I might add)
- The swish and plink of swinging a golf club and making solid contact with the ball on the tee...if I don't hear the plink that indicates contact, I can count on hearing a number of curse words and profanities :)
- Birds singing their hearts out on a still Spring evening
- Pages rustling in the library as students study for exams (no joke, I get easily distracted in the library now because I can hear such slight noises)

It's always exciting to realize I've heard something for the first time ever. The other day, I was watching a TV special on Pope John Paul II and I got up to use the bathroom, which is in an adjoining room to the room with the TV. Although I was unable to see the TV and the captioning, I realized I was still following along with what was being said on the TV. Documentary voices are very clear and easy to understand, nonetheless, to be in a separate room and still understand and follow along with what was being said was an amazing change from a year ago. A year ago, if I wanted to hear something on TV that didn't have captioning, my chances of doing that were very slim, even for documentary type shows. Now, I can leave the room and barely hear it, and yet understand it well enough to not be lost when I return.

Pretty exciting, huh?

Uh oh...where did I put my hearing aid?

I have an amusing habit lately of removing my hearing aid and setting it down on a table somewhere and then completely forgetting I am only wearing my implant. My implant is to the point now that sometimes I can go for a few hours and have several conversations with people without ever realizing that I am only wearing my implant. By the time I realize this, I don't remember where my hearing aid is. If I am in my room, which is when this scenario usually pans out, chances are I have thrown an item of clothing or set some papers on top of my hearing aid is. This only causes me to freak out as I ransack my room thinking, "oh my gosh, my parents are going to kill me because I lost my hearing aid" and then feeling oh-so-relieved when I do find it beneath a pile of accounting homework.

I also find it amusing that I find the concept of an earmold (like the one I use with my hearing aid) to be so...well...yesterday. My implant provides wonderful sound, without the use of an earmold. My hearing aid, on the other hand, forces me to cram something into my ear and deal with ear wax and all that jazz just so I can have moderate hearing. Molds get old and you have to get them replaced and then you have to break them in again, and it is just an annoying process. Sometimes the sensation of having a mold in my ear bothers me, and I just need to take my hearing aid out so I can give my right ear a chance to breath (so to speak).

I did this the other day in statistics. I set the hearing aid down on the desk next to me for about fifteen minutes. I was still able to hear the professor fairly well, so don't worry, I wasn't tuning him out! Anyway, everytime the teacher said something, I could hear an annoying screeching sound. At first, I thought a window was open and I was hearing a bird outside. There were no open windows. Then I panicked and thought, oh no, my hearing aid is laying on the desk and it's making that high-pitched whistling noise it makes when it's turned on but I'm not wearing it. So, I checked my hearing aid. Of course, it was off, just as I had left it. It was only after five minutes or so of wondering what the heck that stupid noise was that I realized I was actually hearing the chalk squeaking on the chalkboard.

I remember classes in high school where the sound of fingernails or chalk on the chalkboard could force an entire class into silence. Of course, being unable to hear high-pitched noises, this meant I was usually the last one talking and was the subject of an intense stare from the particular teacher who used this silencing method.

Oh well, just some random thoughts. My writing ability was certainly not up to part tonight..definitely a lot of run-ons and stuff tonight! Sorry!

Hope everyone is doing well. Enjoy the spring weather!

Has it really been two months?

Well, my NCAA March Madness bracket is failing horribly...and it's only the first day of the first round. So, I'm turning my attention to something more worthwhile, and that is updating this blog which has fallen by the wayside lately. Truth be told, there is so much to be said about my implant that I just have not been able to sit down and take all the time to say everything I want to say about it...so at least I have some free time now and we'll see what happens!

Over Christmas, I got a brand new iPod. Before receiving my implant, I looked upon people who owned mp3 players with absolute envy. I have never been a big fan of headphones, because the ear mold of my hearing aid prevents me from using the better, in the ear headphones. Also, the microphones on my hearing aid are located behind the ear, so the way I have to wear headphones to hear the sound looks rather akward. The pain and trouble of wearing headphones just was not worth it to me...until I got my implant. On the back of my implant, there is an audio cable connection that allows me to connect a personal audio cable to certain devices such as TVs, radios, cell phones and yes...iPods. This means I can plug my audio cable directly from my iPod to my implant without sacrificing much in the way of sound quality or loss of sound due to outside noises. I love uploading songs and videos to my iPod, and I wear it a LOT these days. It has really enhanced my ability to listen to music and hear it better!

Our Spring Break is this following week. While it is not necessarily spring yet, there are certainly signs that spring is on the way here at Clemson. The fountains have been turned back on at the reflecting pool (signifying that the air conditioning is back on, since the fountains serve as the cooling unit for the campus AC), some trees have already begun blooming, and a few flowers have even begun adding a little bit of color to the campus. But, for me, the most pleasant surprise has been hearing the birds singing. This is my first spring with the implant, and I have never had the luxury of hearing the high pitched calls of birds before. Yesterday, I even heard a bird in the air above me and I was able to localize and find the bird that was making the noise. That was pretty cool.

I gave an informational speech yesterday for my Comm 250 class on how cochlear implants work. As far as speeches go, I felt like it went very well. I was surprised at the number of people who actually seemed to enjoy the speech because many of the people in my class had questions to ask once I was done. They seemed genuinely interested to know more about implants and hearing aids, which is always encouraging. It is so comforting to meet someone new and for them to say "I know someone who wears an implant," because then that barrier has already been crossed. That was part of my motivation in giving the speech the other day. I told the group the other day that I hope they will never hesitate to let a person with an implant know that they are familiar with what implants are and how they work. It really does make a world of difference in making a person feel at ease if you go up to them and say, I know someone who has that same issue.

The last thing of interest you might want to hear about is the decision I made involving my classes this semester. In case you did not read about this in my last post two months ago...after a 'break-in' period last semester with the implant, I decided to really use the implant to my advantage this semester in my classes. Rather than request captioning for all of my classes this semester, I chose to do without captioning in all but one class. Rather than develop a reliance on other non-traditional methods of hearing (like captioning), I felt it was time for me to regain valuable and critical listening skills. With captioning in class, it is too easy to just zone out for awhile or completely ignore what a teacher has to say. In doing so, I do not gain any benefit of 'practicing' my listening skills...of developing critical real world skills of hearing what a teacher has to say, remembering and then processing that information in the brain while continuing to listen. It's a complex process and one that many of us take for granted. I don't want to graduate from college and head out into the real world, only to learn that I no longer have all the same resources available and that I am completely on my own when it comes to being able to hear and process information.

With that said, so far I have been very successful in my classes. I am more proactive in staying on top of things, such as readings on the lecture for the next day. I am learning to be aware of where I sit in class and how to choose a seating location that maximizes my ability to hear the teacher AND the rest of the class. I am learning how to work with others (teachers included) to make sure that I am not missing anything. While there are times that I miss what is being said in class, overall, I am doing very well and I am very pleased with my success so far!

That's about all I have for now. My bracket has failed me yet again as I wrote this post...so I'm off to wonder what the heck I was thinking when I filled out my bracket in the first place. At least the Tigers are still in the NIT and should be playing next week against Louisville.

Finally, I will be in D'Iberville, Mississippi (just north of Biloxi) over the course of the next week on a mission trip with Presbyterian Student Association. If you want to know where I am, just picture me on a roof somewhere in Southern Mississippi and you'll have a pretty accurate idea of where I am! Pray for a safe trip and good times!

Go Tigers!

Sweet revenge

I just deleted the last of my engineering programs on my computer. SolidEdge and Maple will no longer give me fits.

I have been back at school for a little over a week and have already had four days of classes. I love my new classes...every single one of them. Unlike engineering, I can actually read this stuff and feel like I will and want to be able to apply the majority of what I am learning to a career and/or everyday life. Accounting is useful almost anywhere...loads on beams are pretty much useful only in select careers and applications, few, if any. of which I could see myself doing.

This semester, I am taking 18 hours. My schedule consists of the following: Honors Sociology, Public Speaking, Business Statistics, Business/Technical Writing, Business Computer Applications (an online pass/fail class that tests my knowledge of computers...go figure), and Accounting. So far my teachers are great, and the subject material is already much more entertaining than anything I ever did in engineering.

I have also chosen this semester to limit the amount of captioning I receive in classes. I received captioning in three of my four classes last semester as I adjusted to life in class with an implant and a hearing aid. Unfortunately, while captioning has many advantages, it also has the disadvantage of allowing me to tune out for a few minutes and then tune in and quickly scan over the caption on my computer to 'catch back up'. While this may be every college student's dream, I tried to refrain from doing this last semester, but when I found myself taking classes that I disliked, the temptation could be so great sometimes that I could not help but let my mind wander.

So, for this semester, I have chosen to practice developing my listening skills again. Ever since I lost my hearing temporarily in my right ear a year ago, I feel like I have lost the valuable ability to listen, pay attention, and process what I am hearing as I am hearing it. This is something we all take for granted, myself included, until I realized these were skills I no longer possessed. This semester, I am only receiving captioning in Sociology, which is an intense discussion based course. The rest of my classes are predominately lecture classes in which the majority of the material taught in class can also be found in the text book or from teacher notes.

It is these classes that have already brought about some striking changes that I hope will remain with me:

1 - so far I have had little trouble getting to bed early. Those that know me know this is something I have struggled with during my college career so far. :) Now, I need my sleep so I can be fully alert in classes, because lip-reading and listening can be exhaustive at times.
2 - my implant is way better than I give it credit for being. In speaking with friends and teachers alike, I find myself gazing off into the distance rather than looking at their faces. This is not born out of rudeness or because I think they have ugly lips, but rather I am still shocked that I can understand and carry out a conversation without the need for lip-reading. In class, this is beneficial in the few times in which I am unable to see a professor's face. While lip-reading still helps tremendously, I am able to hear a lot when lip-reading is temporarily unavailable as a teacher turns his or her head.
3. I am now challenged to stay ahead of the game in my classes. I find myself trying to stay on top of my readings (which are typically assigned BEFORE the class in which the reading material is taught) so that I will be familiar with the lecture material when it is taught. Having a familiarity with the material being taught in a lecture helps me figure out words that are unclear or sound new to me. If I have some sort of idea of what a person is about to say, I can generally understand them better because if there is a word or two I cannot understand, I have trained myself to be able to quickly eliminate words that have absolute basis in that particular conversation. For example, if someone is talking about food and they say something that sounds like feet...I can generally assume that what I thought was the word feet is probably meat.

Those are just a few postiive benefits I have noticed in my classes. So far, I feel like I am learning and understanding all of the material as it is presented to me in class. I would also like to point out, that should I ever feel like I am unable to listen well enough to learn in a class, Clemson Student Disability Services is fully prepared to provide whatever services I need...whether in the form of captioning or some other method. That is definitely a nice thing to fall back on should I realize I need additional listening help.

That's all I have for you guys now! I'll try to post on a more regular basis now that I'm back at school. Hope your Christmas went well, like mine did!

By the way, in case you haven't noticed...check-out the countdown at the bottom of the side bar on the right side of the page...it's never too soon!

Christmas, Bowl Games, Visitors and New Year's Resolutions!

After an extended post-exam stay in the Clemson/Anderson area, I finally made it home for winter break. It is always fun to be living the college life with no exams or classes to worry about, but at the same time, I needed to get home so I could recover from exams and spend some time with my family. A few days after getting home I got my grades and was relieved to see that I didn't fail any of my exams miserably. While I didn't achieve the sort of success I like to strive for, I realized awhile back that this was definitely not my semester. That is especially true, considering I applied for a change of major request halfway through the semester meaning my classes would not apply to my new major. I fully expect next semester to be a much better semester, and can't wait to get there and start my Business classes. After getting my grades, the rest of my break consisted of focusing on everything non-school related.

That focus started with Christmas Eve service and has continued since then. It was great to return to my home church and sit with my parents as we celebrated the birth of our Savior. The next morning was equally as wonderful with everyone getting some great presents. The present of the day for me was definitely a brand new video iPod. When iPods first came out on the market awhile back, I remember being so frustrated because I had no way of listening to music through an iPod. The headphones that come with the iPods are of the in-the-ear type, which I cannot use because the ear mold in my right ear blocks access to that ear canal. In the past, I have also had limited success with regular over-the-ear headphones as I am forced to wear them at an akward position so that the actual sound is directed towards the microphones on the top part of my hearing aid behind my ear. Because sound enters my ear through my hearing aid, when I wear headphones, they don't even cover my ear. To make a long story short, it was pretty much useless for me to consider getting something as cool and nifty as an iPod because I simply wouldn't be able to use it well enough to justify its cost. However, my implant changed all of that. I have mentioned before my ability to plug a personal audio cable from my implant to a variety of different sound producing objects, including laptops, steroes, tvs, and more recently, the iPod. The audio cable is definitely my favorite addition to my life as an implant user, as it allows me to function as a normal person when it comes to situations that require the use of headphones. For a teenager who happens to enjoy music as much as the next person, this is a welcome relief and I only wish it had come sooner. My struggles with being able to hear and and enjoy music are slowly disappearing and this is a critical part of me feeling like a normal individual with very good hearing.

I already have over 17 hours of music on my iPod and I'm sure much more will be added soon!

The day after Christmas, my family - and a friend of mine from school, Alan - headed down to Orlando to witness the Tigers take on the University of Colorado in the Champs Sports Bowl. It was great to witness the final Clemson game of the season, and even better to close the season out with a win. The star of the night was clearly Clemson's freshman running back, James Davis, and he is seen above after receiving the MVP award.

An engineer no more

I turned in my take-home math final about an hour ago and it was the last exam I had to complete for this semester. It was also the last exam I will ever have to take for a class towards an engineering major, and I am admittedly a little relieved. This round of exams this past week has been absolutely brutal and I feel much more confident that I am moving on to a major (Business Management) that suits my skills and traits much better. I will admit that this past week was probably difficult in part due to the fact that I struggled maintaining focus while studying because I knew that these exams wouldn't matter in my new major, but all the same, they were still pretty hard.

Right now I am cleaning out my room and have emptied my desk of everything engineering related...from text books to notes to the engineering paper (of which I have actually grown to love using) and have a stack of stuff about a foot and a half high.

I walked by Sirrine (the Business building) tonight and realized for the first time that I will probably be spending the majority of my remaining college years in that building, and I cannot wait.

Here it is:

It says Textiles over the front door because the Department of Textiles is located on the ground floor beneath the top three floors which houses all the Business departments, including Management. Sirrine is also the largest academic building on campus...it has over four acres of classroom space (there's the tour guide in me, again) and so the picture above shows about a third of the building.

I'm heading to Anderson tomorrow night to stay with Mary Kathleen for two nights and then I'm heading home for the holidays. The Tigers accepted an invitation to play in the Champs Sports Bowl in sunny Orlando, Florida, and my family will be there, of course! Should be a great time, and I am definitely looking forward to it.

Finally, I hope for all of you that Advent season has gone well and that it will only get better. Christ is coming and we should certainly keep that in our thoughts daily.

Cold and Rainy? Must be exam time! :-(

Hey everybody, it's been a long time since I posted anything about me (and not about Clemson sports), so I thought I'd let y'all know what's going on.

It's pretty cold and rainy, and earlier today we had what could possibly have been snow flurries. It was so light that it certainly didn't stick, so it wasn't anything worth getting into a tizzy about.

I had a final in Engineering Graphics yesterday, and now I have no finals until next Tuesday. Then, I have three tests in the span of three days - Physics, Statics, and Calculus of Multiple Variables. So this time next week, I'll have just finished my last exam and I'll be sitting pretty looking at a GREAT time for winter break!

My implant has been awesome so far in cold weather. Sometimes my hearing aids break down in the cold or they just don't seem to function as well when there is a chill in the air. However, the implant continues to plug away and sound the same, whether it's hot, cold, rainy, or completely dry. It is awesome.

A friend of mine sent me an article from Wired magazine the other day. It was one of those articles that admittedly got me a little choked up at times because I could relate so well to the author. The author, one Michael Chorost, is a former hearing aid user (like me) who suddenly and inexplicably lost his remaining hearing (like me) and chose to regain his hearing through the use of a cochlear implant (like me, again!). The article is the story of his desire to regain his ability to hear certain music well and his frustrations at the initial shortcomings of his implant. Just like me, he found it to be a matter of time for his implant to start to clear up sounds, but even then, he felt like something was missing in his music listening experience, and this article is pretty much his description of that experience. You can find the article here. If you have the time, I would strongly encourage you to read this. There were several points in the article in which I would say to myself, "I couldn't have said it better!"

My implant does continue to get better. Before I received my implant, my experience of being around people was vastly different than it is now. Now, when I walk through a crowd of people (like when I'm walking across campus to class), I can actually hear and understand snippets of conversations around me. Words cannot describe how surreal it is for me to walk past a girl on her cell phone and - without even trying - actually hear what her describing how she just spent the entire day studying in the library. While I certainly am not trying to hear what these people are saying, I am finally coming to a point where I just can't help but hear certain things at certain times. Sometimes I just have to stop, look around, and say, now who just said that?! and then ,of course, congratulate myself on being able to hear it!

Even when I am driving my car at night with a passenger in the front seat, I can now actually carry on a conversation WHILE looking at the road in front of me (as opposed to looking at the passenger's lips). While I am unable to 'hear without looking' 100% of the time, my ability to do so has improved dramatically in the last few months!

It is a struggle for me sometimes to recognize that my capacity to hear has increased so dramatically. I have gotten so used to not being able to hear in certain situations that I have gotten to the point where I've pretty much given up to the idea that I won't be able to hear so I might as well not even try. However, I am now able to hear/understand well in many situations that I was unable to before, and even now I find that I have to remind myself that I can hear and I need to try and pay attention because I'll probably be able to understand it now. For example, I have never been able to hear the lyrics on the radio well, but occasionally now when I really concentrate, I'll be able to make out a few of the lines. This was near to impossible before I got my implant, and although it is still difficult now, it is clearly better. I have to remind myself when I hear a new song that I can actually attempt to listen for the words without the aid of written lyrics. The same goes for watching TV. I have gotten so used to having the captioning on that I feel like I can't watch a TV program without some sort of captioning. However, I watched a program the other day without closed captioning and could actually understand some (not all) of what was being said.

So, of course, things are going well for me. Each little triumph every day gives me so much more hope for my future. I can't tell you how exciting it is to continue to realize all the possibilities that are opening up for me and then to set forth in achieving them all.

Clemson Men's Soccer to the Final Four

At the risk of taking this blog to far from its original intent to be one about my cochlear implant experiences, I can't help but find myself posting about Clemson athletics!

I had the pleasure of seeing the Clemson men's soccer team make history against Creighton at Historic Riggs Field. It was an extremely cold night, yet Riggs Field saw its second largest attendance in its storied history, regardless. After three straight shutouts in the NCAA soccer tourney, the Tiger's needed a fourth victory to make it to the final four. They got it tonight against Creighton!

Both teams were scoreless until just under final minute, when a Creighton penalty gave the Tigers a free kick just outside the box. A Nathan Sturgis cross connected with Charlie Roberts with 39 seconds left to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead.

Suffice it to say, the Tigers are now only two wins away from winning the National Championship.

Go Tigers!

1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 C-L-E-M-S-O-N-T-I-G-E-RRR-S, Fight Tigers, Fight Tigers, Fight, Fight

Clemson beats USC, 13-9, in Columbia. I was there, and thought BOTH teams played hard and played to win. Only one team did. Thanks to Charlie Whitehurst and the rest of the 2004 senior class of football players for 4 great memories:

I have a Physics test tomorrow and wil be paying the price for such a great weekend in Columbia tonight as I study all night (I did try to study some last week in anticipation of this coming weekend, but i still have plenty more to study!). After that, I have graphics class which will be just a bit more work, some homework to finish, and then a hot date before heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday on Tuesday.

Wish me luck, and send some prayers my way, as well as to all my friends who are in the same boat as me. Prayers for all of us traveling home for Thanksgiving break are also welcomed. I'll post more over break.

Go Tigers!