The Past, Present and Future
I have died and came back to life. My blogolife, that is. I gotta say, Gallaudet killed my spirit of life. It was a slow, draining death. I was like an apple tree picked of its every morel, then came winter. I lost each and every leaf. Spring then came, bringing with it a severe drought, thereby preventing me from growing a fresh batch of leaves (then flowers, and ultimately, apples). Disaster then hit- a hurricane uprooted me, killing me off. In analogical terms, that is what Gallaudet did to me.
My B.S. years studying Computer Science wasn't so bad. In fact, it was good enough to both get a job offer from NASA and get accepted into the doctoral program in Computer Graphics/Animation at George Washington University. NASA was (and still is) a dream job, and a very good paying one! I have always wanted to be an astronaut - even much more ever since my team won the best mission at Space Academy (Space Camp), out of dozens of competing hearing teams, with me in the Commander's seat.
I do not usually stray from my modesty, but it still bothers me that I sacrificed a LOT in order to serve my people and Gallaudet. I believed that I could contribute much more towards improving technology for the deaf if I opted to become a President's Fellow and obtain my doctorate rather than pursuing my dream at NASA. How mistaken I was! It was the system at Gallaudet that drained me of all my life-sustaining energy before sending me on my way.
I came to Gallaudet with a pioneering spirit, a spirit that never found a home there in the two years I was a President's Fellow. It was like as if it never occurred to King Jordan and Jane Fernandes that I, the President's Fellow, existed. You could count the total number of Fellows on two hands. King Jordan never had the courtesy to personally welcome us to Gallaudet. That task went to the Provost (which should make it the Provost's Fellows Program). We had one group meeting with her. That was it. I never had a mentor, even though they were supposed to ensure I had one. In other words, I had absolutely no support from Gallaudet. In a previous post, I talked about this in more detail.
It seemed as if they preferred me to teach Algebra for the rest of my life, rather than do some pioneering work on ASL animation and the AcceleGlove. Imagine, the AcceleGlove was included in the March 2005 Reader's Digest list of "inventions that will rock your world"! And, Gallaudet wouldn't allow me to take one less course in order to do work on this project. I had to be a full-time student in the eyes of Gallaudet, and the only way to do that was to drop all my research work. I wouldn't. So Gallaudet didn't renew my fellowship.
So, you have it. That's how and why I writhed up and died. Because you and only YOU are ultimately responsible for yourself, I have been in a process of resurrecting myself (the blogopersona of Jason Lamberton) for the past year. What a ride!
The future is on its way to becoming the past. Vlog. Mute Mushrooms. Secession from Gallaudet. Clerc College. Hawaii.
Next blogopost.
Viva la resurreccion!
My B.S. years studying Computer Science wasn't so bad. In fact, it was good enough to both get a job offer from NASA and get accepted into the doctoral program in Computer Graphics/Animation at George Washington University. NASA was (and still is) a dream job, and a very good paying one! I have always wanted to be an astronaut - even much more ever since my team won the best mission at Space Academy (Space Camp), out of dozens of competing hearing teams, with me in the Commander's seat.
I do not usually stray from my modesty, but it still bothers me that I sacrificed a LOT in order to serve my people and Gallaudet. I believed that I could contribute much more towards improving technology for the deaf if I opted to become a President's Fellow and obtain my doctorate rather than pursuing my dream at NASA. How mistaken I was! It was the system at Gallaudet that drained me of all my life-sustaining energy before sending me on my way.
I came to Gallaudet with a pioneering spirit, a spirit that never found a home there in the two years I was a President's Fellow. It was like as if it never occurred to King Jordan and Jane Fernandes that I, the President's Fellow, existed. You could count the total number of Fellows on two hands. King Jordan never had the courtesy to personally welcome us to Gallaudet. That task went to the Provost (which should make it the Provost's Fellows Program). We had one group meeting with her. That was it. I never had a mentor, even though they were supposed to ensure I had one. In other words, I had absolutely no support from Gallaudet. In a previous post, I talked about this in more detail.
It seemed as if they preferred me to teach Algebra for the rest of my life, rather than do some pioneering work on ASL animation and the AcceleGlove. Imagine, the AcceleGlove was included in the March 2005 Reader's Digest list of "inventions that will rock your world"! And, Gallaudet wouldn't allow me to take one less course in order to do work on this project. I had to be a full-time student in the eyes of Gallaudet, and the only way to do that was to drop all my research work. I wouldn't. So Gallaudet didn't renew my fellowship.
So, you have it. That's how and why I writhed up and died. Because you and only YOU are ultimately responsible for yourself, I have been in a process of resurrecting myself (the blogopersona of Jason Lamberton) for the past year. What a ride!
The future is on its way to becoming the past. Vlog. Mute Mushrooms. Secession from Gallaudet. Clerc College. Hawaii.
Next blogopost.
Viva la resurreccion!
2 Comments:
that is a disgrace - a good university always have a good research team - obviously Gallaudet can be a research university if they want - BUT the quality of education at Gallaudet will only improve if a lot of focus is paid on high quality research - Gally is very lucky to have people like you - yet they are messing your heads around, wasting your talent and your academic skills - oh please, what's up with the pioneering spirit of the Gallaudet Family - the Univ is meant to follow the living spirit - but now, erm...it only took a twat or two to kill it off - but its never 100% dead - it will come back...it did live on in many deaf schools in North America (and Belfast!)
Damn Jason! You are definitely the DaVinci of the deaf community....
Shame shame on Gallaudet for what they did! Their loss and our gain...
Im particularly interested in your creating a robot for my cat to play with....along with all the others.
If you have a newsletter...love to peruse it from time to time
and the word...AUTODIDACT...WOW! I've am also self taught in my own discipline and am proud of it! No limitations of any kind....thats the way to go to create....you fit it!
Keep on trucking, Jason. Give my love to your parents :-)
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