Seven, Eight...Up, Down...what's the difference, anyway?

The first couple weeks of school I was feeling pretty on top of my game. I can tell a huge difference between my signing skills, both receptive and expressive, compared to the beginning of the year last year and this year. I still have a long ways to go, but defiantly getting there, and my tutor has commented on the big improvement in my receptive fingerspelling and numbers. Because of my vision-related learning problems, receptive fingerspelling and numbers will always be one of my biggest challenges (I can even fingerspell a word back to you, with all the letters right, and sometimes still have no clue what the word is).

Well, today my private tutoring didn’t go so well. In ASL, 7 and 8 are very similar and even those who do not have dyslexic tendencies can easily mix them up. Last week I thought I had finally gotten a grip on them. This morning, however, I think I put down 7 every single time my tutor signed 8...the whole hour. By the end of the time he was chuckling at me (in a nice way) because I was so annoyed at myself.

A lot of my new classmates are feeling overwhelmed, too. Maybe I should take some of my own advice I’m giving them, and push through it. Things will get better. There are always good days and bad days. ;-)

I’m so glad I’m only taking two classes this term. I’m not sure how I’ll manage when my load gets heavier, but maybe some of the other stuff will lessen? Besides school, I’m trying to juggle coordinating the FW writing conferences, coordinating three (count ‘em, three!) different Peculiar People projects, plus a little bit of office work to pay the bills.

It’s actually kind of bad timing for both my interpreting career and my writing career to be taking off at the same time, but if I slow down on either of them then I will loose ground. At least it’s (mostly) fun and exciting stuff that’s all happening, if hard work.

Speaking of fun and exciting things happening, keep your eye out for some great Peculiar People news later this week!

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