[nfb-db] College

[Jennifer Woods]

Hi,

To those of you who have a fair amount of  residual hearing, but no useable vision and  know how to sign. How did you communicate when you were attending college? How did you take notes in class? The college that I am considering attending only gives one option either CART or an Interpreter. 

I have not received formal tactile training and that is something that the school is asking me to do before I come back. I have quite a bit of residual hearing, but I do not do well in loud situations, nor with people who are soft spoken, so when people ask questions behind me, or the teacher has their back to the direction of where I am sitting I do not understand everything if anything. This obviously presents a problem when attending college as I am not able to ask the teacher to repeat every time I don’t understand something.
 I am currently working on learning Braille. but I know that I can not read fast enough to keep up with CART using Braille. How do you know what is written up on the board?  When I went to school previsouly I had to have someone in class take notes for me and I hoped that the person taking notes got the information that I needed. This was hard for me because I had to find someone who brought a laptop or iPad with them to school not as many people brought laptops to the Community College as I thought would. What did you do when a movie would be shown? How did you know what was being said and what was going on visually?

I do ok with Voice Over, but I have to listen to it a few times sometimes, so I know that will not work for taking tests. 

Any experience and advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
Jennifer