Greg Mackintosh

I found the experience very interesting as well as scary. I tried to imagine that I really had lost most of my hearing and that I couldn‚t just remove my earplugs. I found myself very confused at times and I felt that I was trying to compensate for the hearing loss with other senses. I spent most of the time at home, so I did not experience what it would be like to be out in the world with that condition. Since I was home in NYC when I did the experiment, I was very hesitant to go out into the streets. After living in NYC for my entire life, I know how important it is to be able to hear things when navigating the streets of New York, so going out without being able to hear was not very appealing to me. I do recognize, however, that it would have been a very interesting experience and I probably will try it some day.

Conversation was very effected by the earplugs. When I spoke to people they had to speak a little louder than usual and I had to listen more carefully, as well as watch their lips to compensate for the words that I missed. Also, I could not talk as quickly as usual. When people talk, their sentences sometimes overlap and one person can start talking before the other one in finished (some people think this in impolite). I could not do this with the earplugs in. Usually I had to wait for the person to stop talking before I could speak. I asked my mother what it was like talking to me when she knew I had the earplugs in. She said that she felt like she was talking to an elderly person who was hard of hearing. She had to repeat things and enunciate. I also felt like I was talking louder and my mother confirmed that fact for me.

A few times I was surprised by people because I did not know they were there. At one point I saw my mother go into the bathroom and shut the door. A few minutes later she came out but I did not hear it. She was standing by the door and I came around the corner and was completely surprised because I did not hear her come out as I usually do. I forgot that I could not hear and was waiting to hear the toilet flush and the door of the bathroom open.

I found using the computer a little more difficult because I could not hear the hard drive spinning, so I had trouble recognizing when the computer was "thinking" and when it was not.

After a few hours I started using my cats as almost warning signals. They are constantly reacting to things happening around them so I began to watch their faces and reactions to determine what was going on around me. The most interesting single event happened when my mom came home. Of course I could not hear the door opening as I usually do but I knew that when she did come home my cat, who was sitting next to me at the time, would go running to the door to greet her. Sure enough, my cat went flying out of the room as soon as she heard the door so I knew that my mom was home (or at least that someone had come into the apartment!).

In general, I felt like the sounds that went on inside my body were amplified. I could hear my heartbeat and my breathing, which was very disturbing when trying to read. It is actually a very soothing sound and put me to sleep very quickly. I could also hear all the crunching and slurping that went on inside my mouth when I ate. I guess this would not be an issue if I were truly deaf.

I guess that I didn‚t really notice a difference between high and low frequency sounds. The earplugs didn‚t seem to block out one more effectively than the other. The earplugs just seemed to soften all the sounds I heard. But there definitely was a cut-off volume level. If a sound was softer than a certain level I could not hear it. I guess that the earplugs just reduced the amplitude of the sounds we heard.

My friends and I have always asked each other the question: If you had the choice to be blind or deaf, which would you choose? Until now I have always chosen deaf but now I don‚t really know. The question has now become so much more complicated for me. I guess in the short term, being blind would bring on more immediate problems. However, in the long term a lot of those problems can be overcome to a degree. What has become crystal clear to me in this experiment is how the two systems work together and how important the combination is.