I know this essay may seem repetitious because my last essay was on communication, but in these last two weeks, I've had to learn how to communicate with people that may not understand me or communicate back. In doing the presentations, I've learned once again, I do not communicate with others as well as I thought I did. I was in a group with Megan, Amy, and Julie. Julie is an awesome girl, but it was very frustrating at times because I could not effectively get my point across without getting mad. Mainly, because Julie did not understand me a lot of the time. Likewise, I didn't understand Julie most of the time. Luckily, towards the end of our group project both Julie and I began to talk slower and really made a good effort in order for us to understand each other. We did at that point begin to communicate better. I learned I need to be more considerate of people that are more difficult to communicate with because I finally realized not everyone is like me and we don't all speak the same "language".
I think viewing "Mr. Holland's Opus" was really good for me. I can relate what Mr. Holland was going through with his son to my real life experiences. I have an aunt who happens to be deaf. Her name is Yvonne and she is a wonderful person. I wish I had realized that years ago. When I was little, I never made an effort to communicate with my aunt because I thought it would be hopeless. I wouldn't understand her and she wouldn't understand me, but I was wrong, very wrong. My aunt has a son named Brian who is about two years younger than I am. I always wondered how it would be to have one deaf parent, let alone two deaf parents. Both my aunt and her husband are deaf. Brian turned out great; he has full hearing and is kind of the middleman between his parents and the rest of the world. We were sitting out on my porch about four years ago during the summer and just talking about his situation and I was telling him how I feel like a bad niece because I don't make a good effort to communicate to his mom, my aunt.