The Silence of Sound
hi everyone
i am zandy wong i am currently a
freshman at hopkins and i’m really
excited to give my talk today
it’s titled the science sound so let’s
get started
so if anyone asks me if there’s any good
part to having hearing loss
boss i jokingly tell them well i share a
room
with my twin sister hannah and sometimes
she
snores a lot so whenever i need a good
night’s sleep i can just
smush my right side into the pillow and
it works instant ear plugs every time
because my left side doesn’t have much
hearing
and i’m always guaranteed a good night’s
sleep but besides that though
growing up with hearing loss was an
isolating
experience i have severe hearing loss my
left ear
from over window atresia which basically
means
that one of the bones in the middle ear
the oval window
is deformed so the sound never quite
makes it to the cochlea and up to the
auditory nerve to be processed
as sound about 90 of the hearing
in my left ear is gone and for a long
time
i couldn’t hear the birds rustling
or the wind rustling behind my ears
and i wear a cochlear baja implant bone
anchor hearing aid
plant to help remedy some of this
hearing
now according to the national institute
of communication
disorders and deafness about two to
three
out of every 1 000 children in the us
are
born with hearing loss every year
and that’s statistically actually a
pretty high number
but growing up in a large high school it
was
often lonely i remember being one
of five students with hearing loss out
of a school of maybe 3 000 students
and i never actually met any of the all
the kids that had hearing loss because
disability and hearing loss wasn’t
really something we talked about
at hayfield so i didn’t want to be
known as the girls with disabilities i
didn’t want to be
the outlier so i defined myself in
other ways i learned to play the piano i
played tennis
i did a lot of community service and
everything
was going just fine i just chummed along
went along my day
and i didn’t really discuss disability i
kind of
shied away from it and people asked me
about it and it was going just fine
until i heard
the silent sound which was something i
hadn’t really heard
since getting pulled out for speech
therapy classes
in elementary school so what is the
silence of sound it’s an oxymoron sense
but i’m sure
many of you have heard the science of
sound
there appears laughs coiling in the air
like blaster in your confidence
heightening the tension of a rope that’s
about to
snap without uttering a word a whole
group
ostracize you for what makes you
different
now the last time i had heard the sound
of sound in high school was in a place
that i had found
comfort even community in my national
honor society
this one time 30 nhs students laughed at
me because i mistakenly replied to a
conversation
about lunches with an inquiry about cell
phones
i have trouble hearing in very noisy
places because there’s so much noise
going on
and instead of asking for clarification
they laughed at me and encouraged their
friends to laugh
along without ever telling me what was
so funny
and afterwards they told me we’re not
laughing at you
we’re laughing at what you said and
although they spoke the truth they
aren’t disabled they don’t
understand what it’s like being the odd
one out after you’ve tried every day
to conform to the norm and what also
make the sound of
silence sound so potent that time is
that it came from people i
trusted and admired you expect maybe
six-year-olds to not really understand
the meaning
of what can hurt but you can you
definitely expect 16 year olds to have a
more wider understanding
of their actions and how their words can
hurt someone
we often talk about insults and words
as bullying and harassment those you can
easily define
you can perceive the meaning and intent
behind them
and determine that they’re hurtful but
with laughter
that is different laughter has so many
definitions
laughter can be reaction
reacting to joyous news laughter can be
reacting to what is so funny laughter
can be
the riding what is ugly in this world
what is not perfect in nature
and ripping it to pieces like scraps
of bread and disability has many
definitions as well
both good and bad and kind of like
laughter as well
and after hearing the sound clear last
time
i had to come to a reckoning to
what i define as disability and how that
plays into my identity
and my identity in the greater context
of my school and my community and wider
society
and i had to come to reckoning to find
closure because i knew that just
not talking about it anymore wasn’t
going to do me
any good and so i started thinking
and thinking and think about sharing my
story and i’ll share later why
i decided to share my story but one
thing about
how i was going to share my story and
what is the context of my disability
i came to new conclusions that i should
clear up first
one my experience is certainly not
unique
as a hard apparent person two
i do not know asl nor am i deaf
i cannot represent the deaf community i
certainly
have had my struggles with hearing loss
but i do not know what it’s like
to have my whole world go silent and
three
my experience is not representative of
the whole community of people with
disabilities
i’m lucky enough that my family is able
to afford the cochlear baja implant
and the many doctors appointments
associated with it
and my experience certainly has not been
the most traumatic or even the worst
it certainly has been an experience so
then why me and why now
why would i even be standing on a stage
telling you my story and giving a ted
talk about it
if i acknowledge that it’s not the most
traumatic or even the most unique and
people
ask me dandy aren’t you just being too
sensitive
so what a bunch of kids laughed at you
just move on and go on with your life
and i have not really moved on and have
found closure with it
but somewhere out there someone
maybe not you maybe not me right now is
getting laughed at
because of things that they can’t
control because of they are different
from the norm
and i don’t want to see anyone hurt
because they
can’t be themselves and so that’s really
why i’m here to share my story
if we don’t acknowledge these little
things the signs of sound the things
that are hard to define
then nobody will know and nothing will
change
the signs of sound will continue to
reverberate
so i started thinking and started
sharing my story regionally
and that’s a pretty cool podcast and
it’s been a really refreshing experience
to see
everyone’s responses and just growth of
awareness of what makes us
unique and i eventually did find closure
and i eventually did try to talk to the
people that had laughed at me
and i’m not really sure if it worked and
changing their mind that’s okay i
eventually somehow forgave them
and in sharing my story i learned a lot
about myself
and a lot in finding closure and
confidence in myself
and also learned some ways about how to
reframe disability which is
kind of what i want to introduce you
guys to today so let’s get on to that
part
so first off there are negative
assumptions
about disability the most common example
that you see
of someone with hearing loss is probably
your elderly grandma or your elderly mom
calling you on the phone and she’s like
what can you repeat that again
like that and it’s really loud and it’s
kind of annoying sometimes and you just
laugh it off
um it is the stereotype that
people that are older are probably the
only ones that have hearing loss but
there are
many many people out there with hearing
loss so
when you’re doing that please don’t just
laugh it off please take the time
to listen because everyone deserves a
chance to be heard
and everyone deserves a chance to get
their words out there
and then a negative another negative
assumption about disability
is sometimes people see it as a
compliment
when people tell me oh zandy you’ve
accomplished so much you over
came your disability when i reframe it i
like to say
i overcame this circumstances my
disability
i didn’t overcome my disability i still
have hearing loss disability is
something
that sticks with you for life whether
you’re born with it
or whether you acquire it later down the
road
it’s not something that i can just rip
off like a worn out band-aid
and so and so there
i may never have my hearing restored and
i there may never be the technologies
available
in my life to time to restore my hearing
and that’s okay
instead i overcame the circumstances of
what people boxed me into
and what are these boxes that people put
you into these are
negative stereotypes that perpetuate in
the wider community
in the able community and they are less
prevalent than they are
than than what was in the past but they
are still
relevant for now they are spread by the
people
who don’t like when something’s
different they are spread by the people
who choose to not listen even though
they fully can
they are spread by the people who see us
as just our condition
and not as people and it’s often hard to
hear that
um most people are very accepting when i
tell them about my hearing loss but some
people they kind of
shrink away and it’s definitely an
uncomfortable feeling but by discounting
out people
because they have a disability negates
their effort they work to live
in a able world
they work just as hard if not harder
than probably you guys do to
live normally in an able world
sure i may not have heard everything you
said
i may make mistakes in communicating
with you but it’s not like i didn’t make
an
effort to try and then
also something else i want to reframe
about disability
is that people with disabilities aren’t
deprived of life we’ve simply
adjusted we may not be able to enjoy or
do everything that an able person would
like for example i don’t really like
rock concerts but i substitute that with
different
music and that’s okay we just make the
best with what we have
and then the last thing i want to
reframe about
disabilities is that people are not
defined by
disabilities they are defined by the
actions that they take
in context of their disabilities
disabilities are always going to be a
big part of my life
uh whether that’s including my
influencing my daily actions or what i
study at school
it certainly will linger for as long as
i live
but i make the best of what i can i
still continue to teach
kids in math even though sometimes i
can’t hear them by working
by putting in workarounds and i just try
to see the best in the situation keep
going with it
and then i’ve been lucky enough to be a
student
at hopkins and have done some amazing
research
with the school of medicine and i’ve
been looking at it
back in the context of my disability
sometimes
i do wonder did they choose me just
because
i have hearing loss do they choose me
just to have
that diversity factor and sometimes it
haunts me
it makes me really wonder if i deserve
this spot
and after telling my story and talking
to more people with hearing loss with
disabilities
i realized that this wasn’t the case
they chose me whoever chose me they
chose me because
of the actions i took in context of
dealing with my hearing loss and the
circumstances that people boxed me into
they chose me not despite my disability
but in context my disability
my hearing loss does not define me
i would never wish for someone to have
hearing loss
i would never wish for someone not to be
able to hear
the birds chirping or to win wrestling
behind
their ears i would never wish for
someone not
to have the words to communicate their
thoughts and actions
but i wouldn’t change my experience
growing up as a teen with hearing loss
because of my hearing loss i’m more
caring and aware
i take the time to listen because i know
what it’s like
not to be heard i never take anything
for granted
and have accomplished a lot because i
know it takes a lot to tell the world
that
you are different without succumbing to
its expectations
i’ve been lucky enough to continue
sharing my story regionally and on some
pretty cool
podcasts and it’s really nice to hear
people’s feedback
and just increase awareness i hope it
helps
and at hopkins i’ve been lucky enough to
find a community
of people with hearing loss whether that
be faculty or students just like me
and it’s comforting to know that i am
not alone
and i still want to be known as
the girl who improv’s piano music binge
watches brooklyn nine-nine
and is always up for eating cream puffs
but
i don’t shy away from the topic of
disability like i used to
before if people ask me i tell them
about my disability
instead of deflecting i tell them the
truth all of it
and i don’t shy away from telling people
why their fallacies
and assumptions are hurtful
my experience is certainly not the most
unique
nor is it the first one or last one to
come
but it’s relevant for understanding why
what’s left unspoken
the science of sound somehow
reverberates the loudest
i continue to share my story to
encourage acceptance of
what makes us unique nothing more
nothing less in the spirit of this tedx
events
theme of growth by finding closure with
my
identity as a team with disabilities and
learning to reframe
my definitions and perceptions of
disability i have grown
much more aware aware of the
consequences
our words and actions can have on
individuals
aware that what’s left unspoken
somehow hurts still aware that learning
to
reframe and redefine what we believe is
true
can encourage personal growth and aware
that being heard and being recognized
can temporarily silence the silence of
sound
finally allowing the birds to be heard
at last
thank you