Big Day!!!

Ok, so as many of you probably know I'm currently studying Sign Language interpreting at UVU.  And it's fun. There are up days and down days. Just depends on the week/day/hour/second. lol  In fact, I've been considering changing my major slightly so I can get done sooner. (Mainly because I've been here for nearly four years and this is getting old.

          But anyway!! I was talking about interpreting.  It's a great career opportunity and I love to sign.  I talk and sign at the same time and sometimes it really bothers people.  But I often find it more expressive than english.  It becomes tough though when you're doing both and you do a sign to express your meaning and you get this blank stare because that person has no clue what you're saying.  So you frantically start thinking of the english word that can sort of go with it. haha, totally fun.

 But, I really do look forward to being an interpreter.  The pay is good, it something I enjoy doing.  But I'm not certified yet, which means I can't legally interpret anywhere except in very specific volunteer situations.  For instance, I go home to my parents stake and interpret for a husband and wife for their stake conference twice a year.  The husband can still hear a little bit and can speak pretty well, but uses ASL to communicate. Now, there are multiple ways of interpreting.  The one that I do in my hometown is called simultaneous and/or spoken to signed interpretation.  Which basically means I put into ASL what is spoken at the pulpit.  It's fun, and exhilarating.  But sometimes it's SO EXHAUSTING.  I'm not kidding.  I've learned that I need to be well rested and not worn out prior to an interpreting assignment, or my skills go down drastically.
   There's also what is called sign to voice, which means I watch someone sign a message and then speak it in English.  And it's harder than it sounds because ASL has a different grammatical structure than English, and they also have a different way of wording things.  They also don't have words like the, it, &etc.  (They do have and and 'if' but that's more used as 'hypothetically')  Anyway,  sign to voice has terrified me for the longest time.  Mainly because I can sit and chat with someone or sit through a classroom lecture in ASL and understand it, but that doesn't mean I can translate it to English.
    My dad has seemed kind of frustrated at me because it really is difficult to explain.  I've been signing for a little over five years now and I feel have some fairly decent skills. I can communicate and understand, but that doesn't mean I can explain what's going on.  That takes a lot of work because there's a lot of skill involved.
    Anyway! To my point. (finally) The Deaf Studies department puts on this day long conference about oppression every year for the last three years or so.  It's a great conference and you can go to learn form a bunch of other things and hopefully can understand different peoples opinions about stuff.  Well this year, they were a little low on volunteers for interpreters, and at first I thought it would be a great idea, get some good practice in there, and I didn't need to be certified.  But then I quickly chickened out, because 1. it terrifies me, especially in an auditorium full of people that are hearing, who knows who may or may not know sign language and 2. because I felt like I didn't have enough practice/skill to do it.  So I figured I would do it the next year and this year I'd just sit back. Well, it kept nagging at me, and there were constant posts on facebook begging for volunteers.  And then my dear friend who I've known since my first year here informs me she's doing a presentation on Epilepsy and Neurological disorders and asks me to interpret for her because she'd feel a lot more comfortable doing it if I was her voice so to speak.  Anyway, I told her I'd contact the guy and then the next day got busy and proceeded to forget about it only to have one of my classmates give me the guys number and saying he needed my help and to contact him.  So I did, and I got scheduled to interpret for two presentations that would be about 30 minutes long.  I figure there was some type of reason for me to do this because all the signs pointed to me doing it and so I went along with it.  I sat down with both presenters and prepared for a job that I assumed would end up being mediocre at best.

The conference was today.  And according to the certified interpreters I teamed with (they have people interpret in teams to make sure you get a clear interpretation and if you're doing spoken to signed so you can rest,  the average person can only interpret for maybe 20 minutes before the fear of exhaustion and injury can happen.) I rocked it!!!!  The entire time I was voicing for my friend the interpreter to my right kept saying "you got this" "great job" "great word choice".  As did the other guy keep saying that I did well. And the first interpreter is nationally certified, which means shes REALLY GOOD.  The main reason they kept doing that is because my friend isn't a native signer so it's often more difficult to interpret those presentations becaues of the way the signing goes.   I even had another interpreter who's been doing it for 20 years come up and tell me I did great.

Yeah, I'm kind of on cloud nine right now.  :) I just wish I could tell Trent sooner than an e-mail or a letter would.  But oh well.  I'll get certified and then he can be super proud of me. :)   Sorry that my posts are novels, I just have so much to say sometimes.  :D