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The Story Of My Life, Part 5

From: The Story Of My Life Series
Creator: Helen Keller (author)
Date: August 1902
Publication: The Ladies' Home Journal
Source: Available at selected libraries


Introduction

Today, disabled college students have many different types of accommodations—or modifications—available to make their studies easier: books in Braille or on CD, notetakers, extra time on exams, among others. But when Helen Keller began attending college in 1900, none of these options were available.

Under duress, Radcliffe College made a few crucial accommodations for Keller: Anne Sullivan was permitted to interpret Helen Keller’s classes for her, and Keller could use a typewriter for her assignments and exams. Sullivan also did not press for additional modifications; she felt that the public would question Keller’s achievement if Radcliffe made special provisions for Keller.

Otherwise Keller and Sullivan were on their own. They found it tough going. Sullivan had to interpret lectures for Keller, then read the textbooks to Keller. As a result, Keller spent far more time on her studies than her counterparts. Keller also continued to advocate for blind and deaf people throughout her college years. As Keller explains, she did not have the typical college experience.


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PART FIVE

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THE struggle for admission to college was ended, and I could now enter Radcliffe whenever I pleased. Before I took this step, however, it was thought best that I should study another year under Mr. Keith. It was not, therefore, until the fall of 1900 that my dream of going to college was realized.

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I remember my first day at Radcliffe. It was a day full of interest for me. I had looked forward to it for years. A potent force within me stronger than the persuasion of my friends, stronger even than the pleadings of my heart, had impelled me to try my strength by the standards of those who see and hear. I knew that there were obstacles in the way, but I was eager to overcome them. I had taken to heart the words of the wise Roman who said, "To be banished from Rome is but to live outside of Rome." Debarred from the great highways of knowledge, I was compelled to make the journey across country by unfrequented roads; and I knew that in college there were many bypaths where I should touch hands with girls who were thinking, loving and struggling like myself.

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I began my studies with eagerness. Before me I saw a new world opening in beauty and light, and I felt within me the capacity to know all things. In the wonderland of Mind I should be as free as another. Its people, scenery, joys, tragedies should be living, tangible interpreters of the actual world. The lecture-halls seemed filled with the spirit of the great and the wise, and I thought the professors were the embodiments of wisdom. If I have since learned differently I am not going to tell.

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I SOON discovered that college was not quite the romantic lyceum I had imagined it. Many of the dreams that had delighted my young inexperience became beautifully less and "faded into the light of common day." Gradually I began to find that there were disadvantages in going to college. The one I felt, and still feel, most is lack of time. I used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning one leaves the dearest pleasures -- solitude, books and imagination -- outside. I suppose I ought to find some comfort in the thought that I am laying up treasures for future enjoyment, but I am improvident enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches against a rainy day.

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My studies the first year were French, German, History, English Composition and English Literature. In the French course we read some of the works of Corneille, Molière, Racine, Alfred de Musset and Sainte-Beuve, and in the German those of Goethe and Schiller. We reviewed rapidly the whole period of history from the fall of the Roman Empire to the close of the eighteenth century, and studied critically Milton's poems and the "Areopagitica."

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I AM frequently asked how I circumvent the peculiar conditions under which I must work in college. In the classroom I am, of course, practically alone. The professor is as remote as if he were speaking through a telephone. The lectures are spelled into my hand as rapidly as possible, and much of the individuality of the lecturer is lost to me in the effort to keep in the race. The words rush through my hand like hounds in pursuit of a hare which they often miss. But in this respect I do not think I am much worse off than the girls who take notes. If the mind is occupied with the mechanical processes of hearing and putting words on paper at lightning speed, I should not think one could pay much attention to the subject under consideration. I cannot make notes during the lectures because my hands are busy listening; but usually I jot down what I can remember of them when I get home. I write the exercises, daily themes, criticisms and hour-tests, the mid-year and final examinations, on my typewriter, so that the professors have no difficulty in finding out how little I know. When I began the study of Latin Prosody this year I devised and explained to my professor a system of signs indicating the different metres and quantities.

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Very few of the books required in the various courses are printed for the blind, and I am obliged to have them spelled into my hand. Consequently I need more time to prepare my lessons than other girls. The manual part takes longer, and I have perplexities which they have not. There are days when the close attention I must give to details chafes my spirit, and the thought that I must spend hours reading a few chapters, while in the world without other girls are laughing and singing and dancing, makes me rebellious; but soon I recover my natural buoyancy and laugh the discontent out of my heart. For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

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