At that point in time, not once in Gallaudet’s 124year history had there ever been a Deaf president. Over a hundred years, and there’d never been a person in charge who could understand the students in a way no hearing person ever could. It took days of protests and thousands of people marching on Capitol Hill to make the Deaf students’ demands heard.

I had this idea that by making our presentation about DPN we would get my classmates to understand that just because a person was Deaf it did not mean they were incapable of living a successful, meaningful life. I hoped this presentation would inspire people to treat me like a normal person, like I had felt at Pratt.

So, I had reason enough to be nervous about the presentation for Mr. Wells’ class, but then there was the midterm for Mr. Burke’s chemistry class to throw on top of that. Chemistry was a pretty essential subject in the medical field, and I was on the border of an A-/B+ in the class. A good exam would push me to an A, but a bad one could tank my grade.

NERVOUS? Kathleen signed as we walked into the chemistry classroom.

A LITTLE, I answered.

If the midterm was going to be a multiple-choice test or something, I would’ve been okay, but Mr. Burke announced last week that our midterm was going to be a lab. Labs got me nervous. There were far too many ways to get off track. My lab partner, Eli Collins, never seemed keen to do labs with me either, so it was anybody’s guess how this was going to go.

I took my seat at the lab table beside Eli, who was repeatedly tapping his pencil on the tabletop. He looked more nervous than I felt, barely giving me an acknowledging nod.

Once Mr. Burke was ready, we put our lab aprons and protective glasses on and were given the go-ahead to start.

HAVE 5-0 MINUTES, Kathleen signed with one hand, skimming over our instruction sheet.

“. . . beakers,” Eli said, nodding toward the lab table where our supplies sat. “You . . . math.”

“Deal,” I said, settling myself on the stool.

It was more difficult than I thought to split my attention between the lab and Eli, looking back and forth between him and the equations I was attempting to work on about every thirty seconds, watching him to make sure I wouldn’t miss anything he might be saying to me.

Kathleen was there to interpret for me, but she was a few feet away on the sidelines to give us space to complete the lab rather than hover.

You can handle not having Kathleen here to interpret everything. So far so good, I kept telling myself, tapping out a beat on the tabletop with my pencil as I worked through my equations. Math genius here.