On Monday, May 17th, I started an REU at Gallaudet University. I faced a few challenges this week. Working for a set amount of hours was something that I am still getting used to, but I enjoy being able to spend all of this time reading and pondering over questions. It has also helped me enjoy weekends a lot more! Additionally, I definitely struggled a bit to digest literature in a field that was new to me. It took a long time to read through and was frustrating at times. However, meeting with my partner, Rio, and our mentors to discuss thoughts and questions has helped a lot. In fact, I have even been able to start drawing some connections to topics that I am slightly more familiar with, such as prosody. That makes me really excited! Additionally, Rio and I had many directions that we wanted to go in with telecom captioning so these discussions were also helpful in narrowing down our focus to something feasible.

Throughout the next nine weeks, I look forward to growing in many different ways. I would like to continue becoming more comfortable with the language of our research topic (i.e., being able to more easily read and write about it). I also really want to learn how to sign, though I will have to start with baby steps first. Orientation on Monday morning was the first time that I had communicated in a predominantly signing environment. To be honest, I felt a bit nervous at first! I’m incredibly thankful for the interpreters, but also hope to be able to maybe sign a bit by the end! I see each language as a different lens through which to experience the world, and look forward to seeing what ASL has in store. It would also be really cool if I could get to know my peers better—by the GIFs that they post for sign-in and sign-out, they seem to have good senses of humor :)