Tarani Bajwa

Period 2 Castillo-Eagleton

College Essay

Prompt: The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later

success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you,

and what did you learn from the experience? (250-650 words)

A challenge that I have worked with since birth and learned to overcome is my disability.

I was born with unilateral hearing loss, caused by pre-natal nerve damage. Although I have full

hearing in my left ear, my right ear is completely deaf, which causes speech to sound slurred or

unintelligible, sound to be quieter, and direction of sound indistinguishable, which may be the

reason my older sister loved playing Marco-Polo so much. Even if my hearing could be 'fixed' or

'restored', there's no reason for me to want it. I can't miss something I'd never had in the first

place, even though I experience hardship without it.

It took me a long time to realize just how much my disability affected me, since I was

mainstreamed into public education my whole life and always thought myself the same as all the

other children around me, even when my teachers disregarded my bad hearing, since it wasn't a

visible disability. Before I got my first hearing aids, I would get written up by my teachers for

not listening in class, even though my parents had explained my hearing loss made it harder to

focus. The teachers responded that since I could hear at all, I should be able to learn the same as

any hearing kid.

As you can imagine, they were wrong, something I had realized when hearing aids were

finally developed for my type of hearing loss. Sound became sharper, speech became clearer,

and it felt like cotton had been pulled from my ears. For the first time, I realized just how much I

had missed out on in my education, that my ability to hear was more subpar to my peers' than I
had thought. My grades improved, my focus grew, and I loved the hearing aids so much that

they're still the same model I use today, nine years later.

In elementary school, I thought that I could manage on my own without help. But after

being accepted into a GT middle school, the pre-AP course content required me to make changes

to how I approached my learning. I learned that if I didn't speak up for my needs or remind my

teachers about my accommodations, they would forget, and I would be the only one to suffer. I

became more outspoken and up-front about my academic needs- asking all my teachers to put

me in the front on the first day of school, making sure they wrote down all the homework instead

of verbally reminding us, and never hesitating to ask an instructor to repeat what they said. I used

to be embarrassed if I was the only one who didn't catch something in elementary school, but by

the time I entered high school, I was fully aware of my limits and how to efficiently deal with

them so that I could reduce the amount of content I missed in class.

I self-advocated and ensured accommodation with all my teachers, most of which had

never had a hard-of-hearing student before. I learned American Sign Language, so that I could

better understand the Deaf community and how I fit into it. Not only have I learned how to live

with my disability, but I've also learned that it doesn't take much effort for others to adapt to me

and my needs, only for me to stand up for myself. Although the Coronavirus pandemic has made

it harder for me to understand others without lipreading, I'm confident that I'll be able to work

with my future professors and the disability office to make sure I can learn effectively. My

experiences have left me not only ready to work with my future colleges to make sure I can learn

effectively, but also in my future workspaces, with my future roommates, and with all the other

people I will meet and learn alongside in my upcoming college life.

Word count: 649