A sophomore at Temple University, Clarke alum, Vibha, manages a very full schedule.
Vibha is on a neuroscience pre-med track and is active in the university community, including acting as the community service chair on the executive board of the Pre-med Neuroscience Alliance and as event manager on the executive board of the Bioinformatics Club. In her downtime, she enjoys several hobbies, including playing the flute and dancing with the Temple Dance Team.
This is an outcome that might have been hard to visualize when she was a toddler.
Vibha was born at a hospital in India that did not routinely perform newborn hearing screenings. When she was one year old, her family moved to the United States, and Vibha hit all the usual early childhood milestones. However, her parents noticed that when she started speaking, her language was unclear. At first, doctors suggested she had a speech delay.
Eventually, when she was three, testing indicated that she had severe to profound hearing loss, and she started to wear hearing aids. Two years later, she received a cochlear implant for her right ear which had far less residual hearing.
Vibha’s Family Finds Clarke
Vibha’s parents enrolled her in the Clarke Preschool Program at Clarke Pennsylvania, where the Clarke team helped her develop Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) skills. Importantly, they also provided support for her parents who were learning about Vibha’s diagnosis and what it would mean for her future.
“When my parents first found out I was hard of hearing, they really didn’t have a lot of resources to support them,” says Vibha. “But my mom told me that when they first visited Clarke preschool they thought, ‘She’s going to be okay.’”
Vibha continued at Clarke for the next three years and says the program was key to her academic and personal successes.
“I still remember my preschool teachers — they were great,” says Vibha. “And I’m still friends with people from Clarke. Clarke laid the foundation for me to be successful in a mainstream school and in everyday life.”
She says that in addition to helping her develop her communication skills, her time at Clarke helped her learn to be confident and to advocate for herself. “I never felt embarrassed to ask for help or for something to be repeated,” Vibha says. “Clarke was a big part of that.”
After Clarke’s Preschool Program, Vibha attended a series of private and public schools, while receiving speech therapy from Clarke’s Mainstream Services through seventh grade. Vibha also attended Clarke’s former summer camp for two summers. “Camp was great,” she recalls. “It was all about the community. It was nice to be around people who are going through the same things as you. Little things, like when someone says, ‘Oh, never mind,’ instead of repeating what you missed — it’s annoying. The other kids at camp understood that in a way that other people might not.”
Vibha’s Experience Asking for Accommodations and Advice on Building a Language-Rich Environment at Home
Vibha says she hopes to be a surgeon — a career choice inspired in large part by her own experiences. “Having that early exposure to health care was definitely an influence,” she says. “My experience with my surgeon was great.”
In addition to her studies at Temple, she spends her summers working as an EMT. She notes that while she thought the role would be intimidating at first — especially having to speak with a diverse range of people who could have varied responses to her hearing loss — she enjoys the work and has had largely positive experiences. In some cases, her hearing loss is a benefit.
“Every now and then I get a patient with hearing loss, and [when they see my devices] it gives them some relief. They know I’m going to understand,” Vibha says.
There are still challenges in doing this work as a person who is hard of hearing. For example, she says that when the sirens are on, it’s a lot harder to hear patients. But as with her university, talking to her colleagues about what she needs generally results in her getting whatever accommodation she needs. For instance, she uses a special stethoscope with Bluetooth that can connect to her hearing devices when she needs to take a patient’s vital signs.
Vibha says she has found that talking one-on-one with her professors and coworkers about her hearing differences helps build a connection between them. Sharing her experience with others helps demystify it and allows them better understand her.
With the communication and self-advocacy skills she started to develop at Clarke and the support of her family and friends, Vibha is well-positioned to meet the goals she’s set for herself.
Looking back, she says the only regret her parents have about the course they took is that they hesitated to teach her their native language when she was young. “They thought they should focus on English. But it’s harder for me to learn it now. So, if you want your kid to be bilingual, teach it at a young age,” she suggests. “The best thing parents can do for young children who are hard of hearing is to just keep finding ways to work on their language skills. Your kid will be fine as long as you support them and help them explore their interests.”
