So a few weeks ago, I was contacted by my disability services manager asking for participants in a study with a graduate student who was conducting research for her thesis. She was looking for anybody who has a cochlear implant, and naturally I replied saying I could help her out. We arranged to do it for this morning, and it went good.
I was expecting the tests to be easy since I do them at least once a year. Boy was I wrong. It made me realize that the tests I do at the audiologist for my hearing is quite easy! She took me into the coolest room there is on campus... a vibration-free room? Basically a room that is padded with many many many foam points, including the floor and the ceiling. I was walking on springy grates that was placed over the foam points on the floor. These points were huge and it overall was the coolest room I have ever been in. I should have taken a photo when I had the chance!
Anyways, she had me do tests of listening to a program that says sentences and I was to repeat them back in the best of my capability. There were different levels done, audio only, visual only, and both audio and visual. I found that the audio only in sentences was difficult for me to do. It was different voices each time and that alone made it even harder. I found that I heard the sounds but in my head just could not figure out the words or formulate the entire sentence. I kept forgetting the beginning of each sentence and could only repeat back parts of it, more towards the end of the sentence. However, with visual added in I found myself doing better and even aced quite a few sentences with just visual no audio... It's an awesome skill to have that not many can do... even hearing people. :) She said that I did fairly well on the tests and I really hoped my work helped her out with her thesis. She was in her third year of studying to be an audiologist, and has one more year left to go which is working in an job setting learning those skills for to be an audiologist. It felt good to help people towards a future in any way I could.
The experiment made me realize that I should work on my listening skills more but I was not bad off for only having this implant for three years.
In other news, I am currently in the process of graduating from college! My graduation is next week and I could not be more excited for it! Pat on my back for it. :)
Xoxo
-Annie
