#6 The First Day

I have to admit it’s a while since last time I’ve analyzed a short story so to get started I did some research and read somewhere that it was about racism. My first thought was racism based on color of the skin. But when I read the story one more time, I disagree. But maybe they meant racism based on cultural status, I could support that one. 

I kind of get the feeling that the story is about the mother, what she is doing for her daughter. Every time she has been in her church, she has been looking at the school across the street and been thinking “there should my daughter go”. Maybe she’s been praying about it too.

When the day comes, she is really trying. She buys her daughter new underwear, use an hour to fix her hair and make them both to look good. But even she try her best, their address it’s not good enough for the school. They only want people from a specific area, which I guess is a richer and snobbier one. I don’t know anything about the addresses here, but she is a single mother without education and I don’t think she could afford to live in an expensive area.

Anyway, she deals with the defeat and takes her daughter to another school, which I think belongs to “their” area. A bigger school with more students, and probably with a lower standard.  Here she has to do something she really wants to avoid; ask a stranger for help because she can’t either read or write. But she does that for her daughter. And how I see it, the mother she asks feel better with herself (when she suddenly get so happy) because she obviously can more than the main person who asks her. All the papers she had with her proofs how long she has been planning this. To do everything she can so her daughter can do better than her, get the education she never got.

So, it’s time to say goodbye, and the daughter do something that has been an old game between them, but she doesn’t replies. I get the feeling that she feels that things are changed now. Her daughter is going to learn something important she still can’t. It will not be the same again. She knows that the well-dressed teacher will be her daughter’s new role model. The first line on page 11: “before I learned to be ashamed of my mother” supports my idea. So, the loud footsteps are a sign of a chapter that closes.

I think this is really sad that the daughter actually ends up being ashamed of her mother when she should be grateful that she did for her. It was not easy!

 

Actually I have analyzed more, but was told to make it short (and yes, I find it a little difficult). And, unfortunately, I actually can’t relate this to my personal experiences because in Norway we have another school system and a different culture. But that made it even more interesting for me to read this.

Introduction

 My name is Anniken Blaauw and I am a freshman here at Gallaudet. When I came here I was actually supposed to start at ELI, but after taking an english test I was told to start a bachelor right ahead. So I was not prepared to take those courses like math and english. I named my blog Heineken because that's thats my nickname some guys gave me (after the beer Heineken) and to me it symbolisms the time when I started to accept who I really was.  

I'm 20 year old and from Bærum in Norway (it's just outside the capital Oslo). Unfortunately my hometown is Norway’s answer to Beverly Hills where everyone is supposed to be perfect, which made it difficult for me when I was younger. When I started at middle school (in the age of 14) I started to hide the fact that I was hearing impaired. To make a long history short, I did it pretty difficult for myself.

All my life I have hade pretty huge ups and downs. Sometimes it feels like I have been trough more than an 80 years old person. When I was writing about my “history” I realized it was too complicated and confusing to write down if I don’t want to sit here in front of my Mac the next few days. So, the short story is that I was really alone when I was 13 and 14 years old. Slowly I have made more and more friends, and the last years have been nothing else then amazing! 

The most important thing I ever learned: self-irony. It's so important to not take things so seriously and that made my life so much easier. Actually, it changed my life dramatically. Today I have the life, the friends and everything I was dreaming of when I was younger and thought I'll never reach it. And I do believe that laugher is the best medicine. 

So, having big dreams also gives you many downs. But, if I hadn’t been stubborn, I would never come this far. I talked to my parents recently and they told me about all the times I had done things they thought I would never be able to do. Like when I decided to live in England for the summer with a friend when I was fifteen and couldn't a single word in English. But, to me, the biggest thing I ever have done is backpacking for five months around the world. I feel extremely lucky when I'm thinking of all the funny and unique memories I have. 

But sometimes, being between those two worlds (the hearing and the deaf) is both confusing and exhausting. Because my hearing loss it's getting worse and one day I'll become deaf. But today, I don't know how to sign and I'm struggling in the "hearing" world too. And in Norway it's too many people who doesn't understand the meaning of "hard of hearing" and when I was younger I often wished that I was deaf and then people would see that I had a handicap. But just because I heard one sentence some day, they think I can hear everything. 

Me and my friends when we were backpackers. The most amazing time of my life, no doubt.   

This blog will be used to do homework and to read my class mates writings and learn from them.  I think when the semester comes to an end, I will read this blog and see what I did wrong and what I did right. Then I will see how much I have learned.