Hugging life for all it's worth

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. ~ James 4:14

In other words....no one knows what will come tomorrow, life is fleeting, so go out and embrace the days you have with your loved ones! 

These words are especially poignant as I have one full day left in sweet home Schuylkill County. 

What a whirlwind of a summer it has been!  Thank you to all those I was able to see while home from Gettysburg to having lunch with an English teacher from 9th grade to reconnecting with my best friends from college to doing new things with friends (thanks for invites) and seeing a friend from high school for the first time since the late 90s.

I especially need to thank my parents for putting up with me (and the taking over of the dining room as I tried to prepare for the new job and plan the wedding in the space of several weeks)...I couldn't have done it without them that's for sure!  <3

Now that my car has been packed and the remaining boxes are all lined up at the door waiting to be loaded into my Dad's car Friday morning, the reality of what's about to happen has hit.  The syllabi are drafted and about to be uploaded to Blackboard.  The textbooks have been ordered and arrived in the bookstore on campus.  I am listed on the university webpage under the faculty section.  The next time I will be in Schuylkill County again will be with my love introducing him to the "Skook". 

As I set out to start the 2014/2015 school year, not one thing is remaining the same.  My home is changing.  My job is changing.  Even my license plate and driver's license changed (not without some obstacles). 








But I was wrong.  Some things are remaining the same.




The love & support of my family and friends remain...of both those near and far and Adam has been my biggest cheerleader (next to my parents).  Plus I'm reminded that I already did this in the past.  I already lived in western PA when attending Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  I already lived near my Pittsburgh family when I student taught in Slippery Rock, Butler, Grove City, Uniontown, and surrounding areas. 

Then why does this all still feel so new and terrifying in the way of change?  I mean I've done nothing but face change head-on over the last several years.  I'm more than ready to get settled and back into a routine and slow down the changes at this point but also have learned that change will keep on happening regardless.  I crave routine and organization over the chaos as of late.

Yet, I am counting down the days to when Adam and I will be married and with each other day in and day out (oh boy, I feel bad for him..ha!) and to starting a new life together....297 days to go!

I am excited to meet my new students (all 93) of them as well as live with my housemates in our cozy new home.

I look forward to new collaboration and projects with my fellow co-workers while still maintaining ties with my colleagues in the south and beyond too.

The two conferences I hope to present at in the upcoming school year are in St. Louis (a new city for me) & San Diego (one of my favorites) so yes, there are many things to be excited about professionally, socially, and of course in the personal life.  I look forward to spiritual growth as I encounter new experiences and people in Ohio & reconnect with old friends in the Pittsburgh area!











So here goes nothing.......my arms are opened wide and I'm gonna embrace it all!  Rather than cling so tightly that nothing can breathe or grow, I'm changing my grip to a hug!

To my Skook friends...have you any suggestions for how I should spend my last 24 hours at home for now?  :)

Fifth publication!

Gardiner-Walsh, S., Kemmery, M., & Compton, M. V.  (2014).  First steps in the journey from consumers to producers of research in deaf education.  American Annals of the Deaf, 159, 59-74.

Here is my fifth publication...hot off the presses! 

This one was written with a colleague at UNCG and our advisor.  We conducted the study during the 2010/2011 school year and took our first stab at writing the manuscript in Summer 2011.  I have lost track of how many revisions we have made to this bad boy...one of which included scrapping the original two manuscripts we had written and making it one combined manuscript.

After a LOT of work and rewriting, and a couple poster presentations in Austin, Texas & Jacksonville, Florida we submitted and found a home for the research in Annals.  Voila!!  Here we are seven months after it was accepted looking at the cover page of my first published deaf education article in black and white print!!!  I can't wait to get my hands on the actual journal and see and touch the pages in person. 

Come on mail and deliver my copy of the journal please! 

Stocking up on the Happy

Well, I fell short.  






With only 21 days to go until the end of the 100 Happy Days blog post I ran out of steam.  For those of you who did follow along with this posting, I hope you enjoyed the days I did share.  Maybe if I do it again someday, I'll actually stick it out til the end.




Not all is wasted though.  What I did learn from this challenge was to look for the happy in each day and to try to focus on those more than the not so happy things.  Did I succeed?  I would like to think that I did focus on the positive more so than the negative during these days.  I suppose the analogy of "be like a dog" could be made.  When I think about how little Dusty Shamrock unabashedly shows his affection and happiness regardless of the time of day or if he has just seen me ten minutes earlier, one can learn to be more joyful.  I wonder what the world would be like if we could all be like a puppy and show such happiness with no reservations to one another!




I posted this picture last July but the caption I wrote then still applies today:

Dusty Shamrock has taught me a thing or two over the last 6.5 7.5 years. One I am still working on is trying to take the time to smell the roses. 

Here's to all of us picking a lovely bouquet as we stop to smell the flowers.  :)  Happy July to you all!!

Branching Out Your Own Tree

This past weekend, I presented at the Alexander Graham Bell Conference in Orlando, Florida with a colleague.  It was my last official presentation as someone from University of North Carolina at Greensboro (tear).  From now on, at future conferences, my title will be professor at my new university rather than as student at UNCG.  It was a bit surreal answering questions from folks who asked where I was based out of now by saying Ohio instead of NC. 

Attending AG Bell's conference was a first for me.  There were many sessions I would have liked to attend but finances and time constraints limited those options.  Two sessions I was particularly interested in but unable to attend were, "Honey, Read My Lips:  Joys and Challenges in Romantic Relationships" and "Lessons from the Battlefield:  Deaf Adults Share Their Tips to Success".  As I listened to some of the speakers talk about their experiences, particularly in the session titled, "deaf with a Small "d":  What Does it Mean?", I felt reenergized about my dissertation research on identity and hearing loss.  Seeing others in my age bracket, also with hearing loss yet they grew up in the hearing community as I did, talk about their experiences hit home on so many levels.  It sort of made me wish I had been coming to this conference all along, not just as a professional but as a child with my family and growing up, as some of the participants had done.  It was awesome seeing so many children and teenagers reconnecting with one another and socializing.  I overheard many side conversations in which parents were sharing their stories of diagnosis and gaining services for their children.  I couldn't help but reflect on my own childhood and experiences (and those of my parents and siblings) and wonder what they may have been like had we been a part of this organization.  When I talked to Adam about it that night he said that perhaps I would have taken a different path or be on a different "side" professionally had that happened.  I guess one will never know. 

It does warm my heart to think that the children who are able to take advantage of these opportunities to network and socialize with others "just like them" at events such as these.  When I think back to the social isolation that I felt at times and know that my students experienced, it brings sadness.  I mean we're all, regardless of hearing loss, are looking for that sense of community no matter where we are...whether it's bonding over a shared love of sports, or others who are going through the same things you are, or being interested in the same hobbies....everyone wants to feel a part of something.  I've been saying that for years regarding the Young Adults and/or singles at church...there is a home for the children through youth ministry, for parents of babies going through Baptism, and for the older folks through various ministries and programs.  The same can be said for those of us who dont' have enough hearing loss to be Deaf but don't have enough hearing to be "normal".  Looking back, I can honestly say I got those feelings of belonging and fitting in, for the most part, from the neighborhood children, my siblings, and the classmates at school.  However, I would be lying if I said that a small part of me always felt as if I were different (because I was) and no one could relate (except for the grandparents who wore hearing aids..haha).  Then again, every teenager feels that sense of, "You just don't understand me" at some point in time.  ;)  I remember how awesome it felt when I went away to college and met a few other peers who were kind of "like me" and we could trade stories about batteries dying or the frustration of trying to read a certain professor's lips beneath his bushy beard.  Then, as a teacher, my students and I bonded over tips of remembering to change your battery, the humor in pranking friends with our alarm clocks during sleepovers, and the ability to turn off our parents by switching the hearing aids to the off setting..ahem. 

Now, I'm about to leave this field of education of persons with hearing loss (or deaf education as others call it) I've called home for the last sixteen years as I immerse myself in general education in my new role.  However, I do hope to be able to continue my research, at least in some small way, in identity and hearing loss. 

I saw this video that was published out of the John Tracy Clinic this morning.  When I was little, my parents taught me to talk/listen using curriculum materials from this organization in California.  How interesting it is that my first association with California was that I had "cool stuff" from there that helped me learn to talk thanks to the long hours of work my parents put in with me.  We still have some of the 30 year old materials and I even used some of them with my students in the early 2000s.  Now, when I think of California, I think of my future with Adam. <3  These are the things that float through my mind as I encounter references to California at least once a week and have been since mid October.  I kid you not, at least once a week I see a tshirt or a bumper sticker referencing CA no matter where I am.  This past weekend, it happened in the form of a little boy on Cocoa Beach, Florida wearing a California surfer swimsuit (the words were printed on his bathing suit) and the next day at the Orlando airport when I saw a girl wearing a California Republic shirt in the security line.  I've quit trying to keep it all straight and simply smile and send up a quick prayer of thanksgiving for all that has been given to me through familial support/love and is coming my way in 2015 regarding my "California Boy".  I digress...so back to the video.  How sweet is the video below?!  It's amazing what technology can do from providing access to sound and of course, connecting folks over the miles.  I can relate to both sides of that technology coin..ha!  The video is a bit long (11 minutes) but if you listen to nothing else, one of the parts that resonated with me was what the Mom said from 8 min. 15 seconds to 8 min. 50 secs. 

So, in an effort to stick with my roots while also branching out by attending other conferences, I hope to be able to always attend the Association of College Educators - Deaf and Hard of Hearing (ACE-DHH) conference even though I won't be working with future teachers of the deaf anymore (at least for now).  After this positive experience and seeing the other side that shows there is a group for those of us who don't fall in the big "D" Deaf or American Sign Language (ASL) camps, I'm thinking I might want to start attending the AG Bell conference even if just for personal reasons rather than professional...it is only held every other year and in 2016, will be held in Denver...a city I have come to fall in love with for several reasons!  ;)