Dealing with Arrogance.

Recently, I gave a talk about my book Fixing My Gaze at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. Prior to the talk, I ran into a scientist I had known for years though not well. I told him about my book - how it described my experience of learning how to straighten my eyes and see in 3D despite being cross-eyed since early infancy. The scientist then began to tell me how it was that I once saw and what exercises I could do to improve my vision. I was astonished. This scientist, though a speicalist in one area of neurobiology, was not an expert in vision. What's more, he had never been cross-eyed. He did not know first-hand, as I did, what it was like to see with misaligned eyes or to teach oneself to coordinate the eyes and discover a whole new dimension to seeing. What made him think he knew more about this subject than I did?

Everyone has had experiences like this one. We all have felt angry and hurt when we are misjudged, prejudged, and underestimated. How should we deal with arrogance? I tell myself not to let arrogant people bother me and then I think back to my former student KT and what I learned from her.

KT was profoundly deaf since birth but decided to live in a hearing world. She learned to lip-read and speak. In my class, she would sit in the front row, her gaze fixated on my mouth (which I found a bit disconcerting.) As a hearing person, I doubt that I will ever appreciate the enormous effort and focus that went into her typical school day.

Naturally KT was interested in the subject of hearing so one of my colleagues and I took KT on a trip to the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. There, we met a very learned, auditory scientist who gave us a tour of the hearing laboratories. It was a wonderful day, but shortly before we left, we all sat down for a casual chat. The scientist asked KT what she planned to do upon graduation, and KT said that she hoped to go to medical school and become a psychiatrist.

"Oh no," said the scientist, "you can't do that. You can't hear (as if KT didn't know this...) You can't pick up the nuances and subtleties in your patients' speech. You'll have to choose another profession."

KT seemed to take this pronouncement in stride. Shortly afterwards, we thanked the scientist for a fascinating day, left the laboratory, and emerged onto the street. As I watched KT bravely move into the traffic to hail a taxicab, all my maternal instincts came to the fore. So when we settled into the cab, I said to her,

"That scientist may know a lot about hearing, but he knows nothing about you. If you want to be a psychiatrist, become a psychiatrist. You may not hear people's speech, but you pick up on nonverbal cues that hearing people are not aware of. What's more, you will be an inspiration to your patients..."

I would have gone on in this vein, but KT stopped me with a mischievous smile:

"Don't worry, Sue", she said, "You have forgotten. I've always been deaf. I have been not listening to people for my whole life!"