[nabs-l] Figuring Things Out

Fri Nov 7 10:07:33 UTC 2008

I woke up unable to get back to sleep, so who knows how this could turn out. :)

Limitations are false bariers.  Ignore them.
I take this to mean that if you believe it you can achieve it.  A cliche, to be sure, but valid nevertheless.

Fear is the greatest limitation of all.  It is more perilizing than any physical disability.  It can and often does affect many aspects of life; it is an incidious worm, burrowing itself into daily life.

All that to say this.  It does not matter what anyone else says they can or cannot do; at the end of the day it only matters waht I desire to do and what I know I can do.  Someone telling me it is impossible only means they have yet to do it or know of it being done... The same thing was said about fling, talking instantly with people over long idstances, and all these other things that we now take for granted as daily parts of our lives.

So what makes blindness so different from any of the other undiscovered aspets of life?  For centuries, blindness has equaled hopeless, loss, and misery.  Why was this?  What is it about darkness, both physical and psychological, that makes human beings so terrified?

Not addressing any specific faith or religious beliefs, but I have found meditation to be extremely helpful in helping me to face the fear.  It doesn't mean that it is gone, but it helps me to analyse why I feel the way I do; mindful breathing during the moment also helps--being aware of your body, how you feel, and paying attention to what causes you fear, tension, stress, etc.

Joe, thank you for reminding me of these things; I am saving your e-mail--there will be times when I will doubt myself, both in Minnesota at training, and otherwise, and I can look back at that and say, but this is what I have always believed, and here is someone else backing me up 100 percent, who also understands how these things work.

Only my two cents.  Don't you just love 4:00 a.m. ramblings?  <grin> Take care,

Harry

--- On Thu, 11/6/08, Joe Orozco <jsorozco at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Joe Orozco <jsorozco at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Figuring Things Out
To: "'National Association of Blind Students mailing list'" <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Date: Thursday, November 6, 2008, 11:13 PM

Harry,

Forgive the delayed response.  I found your post to be quite refreshing but
am just now finding sufficient time to give it some thought.

Let me give you a glimpse of some of the larger things I want to accomplish
before I die.  I want to write the horror novel that will put Stephen
King's
latest nightmares to shame.  I want the novel to be later turned into the
movie that will make you wish you had Stephen King back.  The outdoors are
great, but I embrace my privacy and want my own property to be able to ride
the score of horses I will one day own.  The property should be large enough
to share with the children I will take in to protect against violence and
neglect.  It only makes sense to provide them a home after winning cases
that will condemn the perpetrators that would dare spread the strife of
modern-day slavery.  I only ask that the children are nice to the even
larger mass of canines I will pull off the streets and filthy shelters.
Maybe the presence of the horses, kids and dogs will create unnecessary
noise, or maybe the noise will stop long enough to listen to the music I
will compose on the piano I will soon master.  After a long day of service
to my country I am confident I will be able to get one step closer toward
reading all the best classics ever written, and perhaps from their pages I
will go to bed thinking there is one more ambition I might do well to
conquer.

Never mind the number of steps it will take to accomplish just one of these
goals.  I am too arrogant to allow such words as "hope" and
"maybe" to enter
my thoughts, let alone my writing, and if I should take a fancy to one day
visit the moon, one can only assume that distant rock will be sturdy enough
to hold the weight of my expectations.

The point is simply this:  You are the author of your own destiny.  If the
results of your career assessment claim you can do any number of things, it
may be owed to the fact that you are too grand to be summed up by any flimsy
evaluation put together by an academic too ignorant to recognize the lack of
borders of the human mind.  If you want to teach, then teach.  If you want
to teach in some remote village in Africa, pack some mosquito nets.  I am by
no means the brightest Crayon in the box.  I shared your fear of the math
section in the GRE.  Yet I find myself a semester away from a Master's.  If
I can do it, you can do it better.

Life would be absolutely dull were things laid out in an easy pattern.
Every two weeks, sometimes every other day, I feel confused about what I am
doing today and get restless about jumping ahead to what may be found
tomorrow.  Some people would call such state of mind pitiful.  I call these
people jealous, because they lack the number of options necessary to achieve
this level of complication.  Pick an ambition.  Invest your best efforts
into it, and if another ambition should catch your will tomorrow, use what
you learned from the first ambition to cultivate a passion.

Reflectively yours,

Joe Orozco

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for
humanity."--James M.
Barrie
-----Original Message-----
From: nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nabs-l-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf
Of Harry Hogue
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2008 2:16 PM
To: nabs-l at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nabs-l] Figuring Things Out

Hello everyone,

Let me apologize in advance for how long this turned out!  I thought as I
wrote and so you're getting my stream of consciousness!  Thanks!

I would like to hear from anyone, either on list or off of it, who has taken
the GRE...preferably if your math skills aren't great.  I am looking
around
at some other graduate schools after deciding that linguistics may not be
the best master's, based on a class that I'm taking this semester
having to
do with the historical development of English.  Most graduate schools either
requrie the GRE or the MAT, with the majority prefering the GRE.  I truly do
not believe that I have the skills to pass the GRE because of its math
section--and although part of it may have to do with vision, a lot of it is
just genetic--I simply am not good at math (neither is my brother who is
fully sighted).  Thoughts, though, on succeeding with it, if I have to take
it, are appreciated.

I would also welcoem any strategies for finding schools that accept the
MAT.  Oh and for a master's degree, I still want to be a college professor
but am looking aroun at my options--I have actually thought about doing
TEFL/TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) overseas...I'm
really a bit intimidated.  I know what I want; I think I would really like
the idea of teaching overseas for a year or two and being a professor (in
whatever order those happen to arrive); I've even thought about going for
a
master's overseas--is that a crazy idea?

I am at this point where I am very confused and don't feel like I have a
whole lot of time.  I took a career assessment, and as I suspected, it said
that my responses didn't show a clear pattern, meaning I have a lot of
options and basically could do anything.

So this post isn't really about the GRE, or graduate school, or teaching,
or
any of it.  I suppose it's more about me trying to make sense out of the
confusion; I'm hoping for the things I want, wishing desperately for them
to
be possible, but still having the doubt that I could be comfortable going
overseas and teaching (how could I, given that every time I move I have
tention in my body from the cane)?  I say it is from the cane, because while
walking down the hall, when no one else was around, I stopped using the cane
and just held it vertical, and noticed that my tention immediately eased.  I
was much more comfortable and I had no anxiety at all.  The constant noise
of the cane on the concrete/tapping against doors/etc grates on me, and I am
just now figuring this out.  Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks, if you've made it this far.  I didn't intend for this to turn
into a
book.

Thanks,

Harry Hogue

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