Three weeks

The first three weeks of school are over. They have flown, but have also be perfectly insane. All of last weekend I had something not school related and thus I didn't do any homework for four days. I came back to school on Monday needing to do some catch-up work, and found that the professors were into full-homework mode! It seems that the homework this semester has less busywork, which is a blessing, but also means that every assignment is important and none can be faked!

I didn't post anything about the terminology paper because everything was so crazy, and because I got out of the habit of posting here over break! For the terminology paper I had to survey 5 people and ask them their perspectives on 8 different words connected to the Deaf-World. I then had to write a 4 page paper summarizing my thoughts and reactions to the survey answers. The project wound up working out, though a few times it was a giant headache. On the basic level, though, I can talk to people and I can write a paper. The assignment was interesting, but didn't require any skills I don't already have.

The next huge project, however, has been a very different story! On Tuesday we were given a video tape to watch and gloss. Glossing is the invented way of writing ASL with English words and symbols. ASL has no written form, but for the sake of study hearing people have come up with a system of writing it anyway. Well, this clip was a grand total of 59 seconds long but took around 4 hours to gloss. Catching every facial expression, figuring out how to write down and describe every classifier, needing to understand all the fingerspelling. The assignment isn't due until Tuesday, but I finished it last night out of a desire to just finish the thing! The rest of my classmates are having the same difficulty and annoyance with the project. It doesn't really help to know we'll be glossing more throughout the rest of the semester. I think we'll mostly be glossing our own work, however, and that should be somewhat easier as we know what we signed!

We had our first interpreting lab on Wednesday and I'm happy with how it went. The teacher seems nice and reasonable and it was good to get back to working with the equipment and interpreting again. We interpreted a short clip we had seen before and I feel I did a good job! It is so invigorating to listen to my own voice interpreting and think it sounds decent! I feel the wheels of interpreting in my head are finally starting to turn.

I just finished recording for the first time this semester! For consecutive interpreting we have to find 2 words or phrases each week which we don't know how to interpret then bring them to class and figure out, together, how we would turn one of the words/phrases into ASL. We then have to record each word/phrase that everyone shared. That's a total of 7 words a week for 11 weeks which we turn in all together at the end of the semester. I didn't record last week because of the other activity that was going on, so I did 14 words today. Either interpreting/recording was easier than I had thought, or I don't have a good idea of what I'm supposed to be doing, because I was satisfied with the recordings on my first try! Again, though the homework is somewhat overwhelming, I'm glad to be back at school and in a familiar routine.

This weekend I have been volunteering at the Deaf Center during the Western States Basketball Conference. My job is to tend the concessions table. Not inherently exciting nor busy but I've had the chance to be in the Deaf community and both talk with Deaf and see conversations between Deaf. I've noticed that I'm actually comfortable with having a casual conversation in ASL! I'm so happy that I'm starting to feel confident with my skills, though I know I still have a ton to learn. Between a workshop tomorrow and volunteering again, I don't really have a weekend again. At some point I need to be able to just sit down without any homework to do. At this rate, though, I'm guessing that will happen in May!