Learning that Being Different is Okay
I was pretty normal until I became deaf back in 2011. Until then my most defining traits were having very thick glasses and being sort of geeky. I wasn’t very good at making friends unless they happened to be interested in tech and coding. Alas, knowing how to code back then wasn’t cool.
Things got a bit better in college though. I went to NYU Stern business school and graduated with a double degree in Finance and Information Systems.
And with my coding skills, I could write programs to help me do final projects that everyone else wouldn’t be able to do since they didn’t have these super-human abilities.
I fondly remember that time when I was the first one to finish the finals for the Intro to Information Systems course by a long shot. Walking down from my seat past everyone else that still had their heads down focusing on their tests to the professor sitting up front. And then telling him I was done, handing him my sheets, and strolling out of the classroom.
I heard later on that I raised quite a few heads.
Originally I was supposed to pursue Finance and Accounting, which was what my parents wanted and why I went to business school in the first place. But after my first accounting class that sort of put me to sleep, we made a compromise.
I graduated in 2011 and started working as a software developer at a bank. I couldn’t land a finance job because I just didn’t show enough interest and enthusiasm. This was around the Financial Crisis so soon realized just getting good grades at the top school didn’t mean as much as my parents hoped. Though I probably would’ve hated a finance job anyway because of all the interpersonal skills needed. My dad was originally betting that I would learn to love it after 4 years but that was not to be.
A few months after starting though, I needed an acoustic neuroma (a tumor on a hearing nerve) removed around my left ear. I had already lost hearing on the right when I had radiation surgery to kill a tumor on that side when I was around 12. It worked but also killed the hearing nerve too. However since the left was still good, didn’t result in too many problems.
However, after this surgery, I became completely deaf. And things started to changed.
Friends and Being Social
My “friends” slowly drifted. I only had a few to start but back then we didn’t have apps like Live Transcribe that could transcribe speech almost instantly. And well even if it could, it doesn’t work well in noisy public spaces.
For a while I was a bit lonely, but over time, I figured out how to have fun by myself and honestly it turned out for the better since often it was a hassle getting other people to go places with me anyway.
So in a way I was able to get a lot more freedom.
Career
When tech started taking off, a lot of colleagues landed jobs at startups or other companies with higher pay. I had a college friend that jumped every few years so quickly started making more than me. Skill-wise I was better by a long shot but recruiters didn’t start ignoring him after a few emails or messages. This often happened to me the moment I told them I was deaf. I got so fed up by this, eventually on my LinkedIn profile, I wrote that when they contact me, they must state that they understand that I’m deaf. Guess that helped but the number of messages I got seemed to decrease too.
And even in interviews, it was awkward because a lot of the time was spent by the interviewer writing down what he or she wanted to say. I still only got the same amount of face time like everyone else though.
But I’m sure all the interviewers hands were pretty tired after talking to me so probably left a bad first impression… making the whole interview and time I needed to take off from work a complete waste. Sometimes I thought they just asked me to come in so they could see what a deaf developer was like… or say that they didn’t discriminate.
There was one time though where I did get further because the interview was hands-on coding by building an app. And apparently I was competing with the other candidates whom I basically floored.
They kept me all day to meet different people but in the end they said even though I was good, they were concerned I wouldn’t be a good fit for the role they had in mind…
Shortly after that right before another interview, I had a seizure so that was the end of me trying to find a better job. Spent half a year seeing different doctors to find the cause and how to treat it.
But with all this combined, the message came across pretty clear to me: Finding a new job just wasn’t worth the time and effort no matter how good I am.
In general it’s just very hard for people with disabilities to get recognized for what they can do versus what they can’t because we don’t ever get the same number of chances as everyone else.
Finally though, I started looking at the big picture. My job already was good enough and actually better than most when compared to non-tech jobs. I could easily pay my bills and after a few years even saved enough to buy an apartment in Jersey City making my commute to the office just 30 minutes. Half of that was me walking from my apartment to the PATH station.
But in all cases, what I had to learn was that it’s OK to do things differently and I’m the one that decides what/who I’m competing against.
A few years ago was talking with my parents and their friends, who are in their 50s, after another surgery I said:
Actually if we were playing the Game of Life, I already beat you all to Retirement.
Sure I don’t have the highest paying job or am married with kids. But I don’t want those anyway.
So I’m already relaxing on the beach… Or I guess my bachelor’s pad, eating out or ordering delivery whenever I want. Ironically NF2 got me to the finish line before everyone else and before I lost the ability to do the things I actually wanted to do.
I just needed to accept early on that I needed to do things differently from normal people as well as what was actually important to me or makes me happy.
I am fortunate though that somehow I had the skills and circumstances that I had. One thing is that even though I am now deaf, I still remember a lot of songs from before I lost hearing, so I’d like to share these two which would be the theme songs of this story.
