Audiological Madness

Recently, I had a very interesting experience: I had my hearing tested for my Audiology class. It was nothing like in elementary school because apparently that was just a "screening" and this was a full on test. I brought along my deaf friend with me because she had to observe in order to get credit for the same activity. This girl is profoundly deaf - can't hear anything except an airplane (maybe) so it's best that I got the test.

Man, technology has changed over the years! The test was neat but also very annoying because at one point, they were just sending vibrations and pure tones through your ears to see how your ear drum reacts. It wasn't the typical "raise your hand when you hear a sound" thing (that came later!), but instead it was just annoying. Basically, my politeness with the nice graduate student stopped about 10 minutes into the beeping. It got even more annoying with the probing and adjusting of my ear piece thing-a-mabobber. The worst was when they tested my threshold of loudness. They told me to wave at them when the sound got so loud I couldn't handle it. Once my ear drums starting vibrating uncontrollably, I knew I had enough and waved my arms like a deranged barbie (a deranged barbie has become the theme of my posts recently).

The test took an hour and a half and when I was done, I whipped on out of there with messy hair and my ears ringing as fast as I could.

The news? I'm still hearing.

Awesome.