Be Better, not Bitter
Seberapa seringkah kita mengeluh, menyalahkan, atau bahkan menghujat sesuatu yang membuat drama hidup terasa “bitter”. Repetitif keluhan are even too bitter as if there’s nothing in our lives worth living. (Maybe that’s how the word “loser” was invented).
Selama menjadi dosen di Unisma Bekasi, semester ini saya mendapat kesempatan mengajar salah seorang mahasiswa berkebutuhan khusus. Ya. Allah berkenan mempertemukan saya dengan seorang mahasiswa yang disabled, he is deaf. Even though, physically, he’s quite a good looking guy with white skin and sweet smile.
I discovered his disability to hear, when I asked him to introduce his name and spell it. Instead of gesturing that he was unable to hear, he tried to accomplish my instruction. His utterances were not clear, and neither were his spellings. Yet, I thanked to Allah, I was able to recognize every single letter he spelled, and then I was lucky I managed to know his name throughout our unique communication.
To ensure me about his condition, he wrote something in a small book and showed it to me:
Nama saya Arifin. Saya tunarungu.
Smiling, I thumbed him up and I wrote back:
Okay. Nice to meet you, Arifin. My name’s Melani. Welcome to the English lab.
He read, smiled and gave me his thumb up, too. This gave me shiver, to be honest. We both smiled “celebrating” we’ve found out a unique way to communicate.
Another challenge was when I asked all students to practise their listening skills. I asked them to put on their headphones, and listen to the audio about spelling.
But of course this didn’t work for Arifin. So, again, writing my instruction on a paper was the only way to tell him.
Can you write the spellings for these words? I wrote some words : ‘girl’, ‘man’, ‘women’, ‘hungry’ and ‘here’.
He nodded and started to work on his paper sheet. And he made it.
In the end of exercise, I asked him to watch a video containing pictures of fruits. In random gestures, I tried to “explain” that he had to memorize the names of each fruit, and rewrite them on another worksheet. And again, he did it, effortlessly.
This guy amazed me. He may not be as perfect as those other good looking guys I’ve ever seen, but to me his confidence and hard work have been the compensations for his disability, his deaf. Since the rest of the students are physically normal people, I also treated him as normal people. He got equal treatment like the others, however in distinctive way, of course.
It is me who needs to learn more, how to teach or to handle a class with the special guy like him. I also lear something, Arifin has chosen to be better, not bitter. And he’s proven it.
