Krystal talks about what it was like to spend the first 6 years of her life deaf, her transition to partial/half hearing and then eventually, at the age of 18, to near-full hearing. What made this experience unique and particularly challenging was that before the age of 7 Krystal had no exposure to a formal language, spoken or signed. And this heavily influenced how for the rest of her life, despite struggling with school, enduring intensive therapy and still undergoing additional surgeries, she was treated as a hearing person, despite not really being one. An intuitively visual, tactile and kinesthetic learner- Krystal faced great strife gaining literacy, intelligible speech, and overall satisfactory performance academically. Krystal talks about the intimate process of learning how she saw the world differently from her full hearing friends. School requirements of a second language and participation in band (or orchestra) added a beautiful complexity to her story. Krystal goes into visual detail on the elegance of how music feels and looks, while acknowledging that her early exposure to learning English in a not-so-native way probably helped her become proficient and fluent in multiple other foreign languages. An alluring narrative of life, a journey to ivy education, and contemporary thoughts on disability. Known to dabble in a variety of projects across industries and in the most multi-disciplinary and cross-brain way possible, Krystal has more recently shifted from her professional work coordinating medical trips for spine surgeons offering care to children in need of scoliosis treatment- to pursue her masters in international public health. In her current academic realm, she’s constantly pulling from and using her previous clinical work to fuel her passion and generating novel approaches to research in her field, including her more current qualitative efforts in adaptive attire; essentially clothing intellectually designed to accommodate the large proportion of individuals that don’t fit conventional mannequin body shapes. A renewed concept in need of broadened saliency. On a more personal level Krystal has had to manage several chronic health conditions from a young age, but one of the most impactful experiences, one that on the surface seems to have been resolved, was the first formative years Krystal spend deaf and without a formal language. Now at Brown, speaking and proficient in several languages, you’d never know. Finishing her Master’s degree this May, Krystal has already embarked on several entrepreneurial endeavors (one being a group travel program and the other a local yoga cooperative). And if she wasn’t already busy, she fills her spare time with refurbishing and hand painting old furniture, repairing appliances and building new working lamps from discarded broken parts. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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Tags Beginnings Deaf deaf life English Girl Krystal Language learning Life native real Sarcone Story TEDxBrownU TEDxTalks