Full Transcript
{Music}
Holly:
Oh god, what am I going to do? I don’t know how to travel. I’m 17 years old and I can’t spend the rest of my life holding someone’s hand.
Jeff Thompson:
Meet Holly Scott-Gardner.
Holly:
Life takes you in all directions. And what I try and do is just be open to an opportunity and think, “Well, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this opportunity again, so I’m going to take it.” And go with how life wants me to go.
Jeff Thompson:
Senior at university, volunteer at Enchanted Hills Camp.
Holly:
But what was interesting for me was that it was blind staff who were delivering the activities, because that’s something I’ve never seen in the UK is, for example, a blind person running an archery activity.
Jeff Thompson:
Blogger on Catch These Words, and a blindness advocate.
Holly:
If it’s advice regarding choosing a university, I think don’t choose it based on your blindness, at least not to begin with. You’ve really got to choose it based on the course. So you could ask hundreds of blind students and they’ll all tell you what they think is the best university, and it’s not going to be the same.
Jeff Thompson:
Holly is from the United Kingdom, and will be returning to the United States to attend Adjustment to Blindness Training in Colorado.
Holly:
The interesting thing is a lot of blind people would tell you that having a dog has soured their relationship with a cane. They get a dog and they’re like, “I don’t really like my cane anymore.” For me it was the complete opposite. Having a dog has been really fun, and I love it. But it’s actually made my relationship with using a cane much more positive, because I have a much more positive relationship with myself and with blindness and travel overall.
Jeff Thompson:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.BlindAbilities.com, on Twitter at BlindAbilities, and download the free Blind Abilities app from the Apple Store and Google Play store. That’s two words, Blind Abilities. Be sure to check out the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying, “Enable Blind Abilities.”
Jeff Thompson:
And now please welcome Holly Scott-Gardner. We hope you enjoy.
Holly:
Life takes you in all directions. And what I try and do is just be open to an opportunity and think, “Well, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this opportunity again, so I’m going to take it.”
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson, and today we’re talking to Holly Scott-Gardner, and she is a blogger, a volunteer, a student, and a blind activist. How you doing, Holly?
Holly:
I’m good, thanks. How are you?
Jeff Thompson:
I’m doing really good. I’ve been reading some of your blogs on Catch These Words. Everybody can go check that out. You’re quite active on that blog.
Holly:
Yeah. There’s people who definitely post far more frequently, and some people post every day. But I think I post something when I have something I really want to get out there into the world.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh yeah. You don’t hold back sometimes.
Holly:
That’s true, yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
And you’re actually preparing for finals right now too.
Holly:
I am. I’m in my final year of university, and I had one final last week, and I have one more this week.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh wow. Right after you just toured the United States too.
Holly:
Yes.
Jeff Thompson:
How was that?
Holly:
It was great. I had a lot of fun. I was there for a month over Christmas in the Bay Area. So out by San Francisco. And it was really nice. Actually very relaxing.
Jeff Thompson:
Is it different than the UK? Like street crossings, just your everyday life throughout your day?
Holly:
Oh yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
It is?
Holly:
Yeah. So the weird thing about the UK is in the US you guys have a lot of traffic rules. And I’m not saying we don’t. Obviously there’s rules on how you can drive in the UK. And it’s not just a free for all. But you guys definitely have much more rules because your intersections are so much bigger.
Holly:
Whereas in the UK most of our streets would be maybe two lanes. Four lanes is considered reasonably big. Whereas in the US that’s not considered big at all. So crossing streets is a whole different experience. And I really started to learn what traffic patterns to listen out for, and things like that. But that was definitely a learning experience.
Jeff Thompson:
We didn’t have enough cobblestones, huh?
Holly:
It’s kind of nice not having them.
Jeff Thompson:
So university. What are your career goals?
Holly:
So I’m studying a bachelor’s degree in Spanish at the moment. As I said, I’m in my final year for that. My career goals are something in the field of vision impairment. I’m definitely interested in rehabilitation or teaching blind students. The difficulty with that is in the UK the pathway to those careers is far more complex than in the US. So we’ll see what happens with that in terms of formal qualifications. I would like to study one of those programs.
Jeff Thompson:
And you volunteered out at Enchanted Hills Camp, part of the San Francisco LightHouse this last summer.
Holly:
I did, yes. Summer of 2018. I had never been out there before. I had actually never heard of Enchanted Hills until the fires that were really awful in 2017 and destroyed a lot of camp. And I had never heard of it, but I always wanted to work at a summer camp. And it had just never happened for me because I was always so busy.
Holly:
But when I heard about that I emailed the director and I basically said, “I’m a blind student. I’d really like to come and do this.” And he ended up giving me a [inaudible], and I went out there to volunteer.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s great. Was that Tony? Tony Fletcher?
Holly:
Yes. Yes.
Jeff Thompson:
Good guy. Good guy.
Holly:
Yeah, he’s really great.
Jeff Thompson:
I think he’s been doing that for 20 years now. Yeah, they gave him an honorary bench. They made him an oversize bench up at the woodworking barn.
Speaker 3:
As we all know, Tony is an amazing person coordinating this event. Working at camp for 20 summers. He is truly an inspiration for all of us on staff, how he works with the campers, interacts with everyone, and how he just keeps camp running. This summer, being his 20th summer of staff, couldn’t let this summer go by without acknowledging Tony and kind of spoiling him a bit. Because we all know that he deserves it, right?
Speaker 3:
So early on this summer [inaudible] we presented Tony with a handmade bench made by George Wurtzel. He’s one of our staff.
Speaker 4:
Please check it out.
Speaker 3:
And we also presented a tree to Tony. It’s his favorite tree, a maple tree, that’s going to be planted in his name on camp. But we wanted to go a little further and spoil Tony. So we got him something for the bench. It is a plaque. It says, “Tony Fletcher,” in quotes, “20 years of flexibility.” Below it is 2018. And on the right side is Braille.
Jeff Thompson:
Did you do any woodworking?
Holly:
I didn’t. It’s interesting because the first week of camp was staff training. Because camp was still being put together after the fire, we were doing a lot of work as well, trying to help out. One thing we did was put together the beds. I have absolutely no experience in anything to do with woodworking or building or anything. And it was kind of a joke that one of the other counselors, who’s also blind, he spent an afternoon teaching me to hammer nails and use a drill with a screwdriver end on it. Because my skill level was that nonexistent, so I definitely didn’t end up getting up to do any woodworking sadly.
Jeff Thompson:
So what was your routine at camp after you got your training? And what kind of training did they give you? Since this was your first time at a camp.
Holly:
Yeah. So staff training covers safety. So how to assist in activities safely. So things like archery and stuff like that. It covers mandatory reporting. We’re working with children and we’re working with some adults who may live in care facilities. So we have to understand if something has happened then how to report that and follow the law in California. It covers things like assisting people transfer in and out of wheelchairs, how to guide if you’ve never done that before.
Holly:
And we also do a day where everyone goes under blindfold and takes part in the activities under blindfold to give staff who might not have much previous experience with blindness a kind of idea on this is why we’re telling you to explain it to a camper this way. Because if they’re doing it under blindfold they’re going to have more understanding of that.
Jeff Thompson:
Let’s back up here. You mentioned archery.
Holly:
Yes.
Jeff Thompson:
Was that shocking to you? Or was it just, “Okay, archery.”
Holly:
What was interesting for me was it wasn’t shocking that the campers were doing it. I’ve been to summer camps. They’re week long camps in the UK for children. And I’ve been to them when I was a child. And we would take part in those activities. But what was interesting for me was that it was blind staff who were delivering the activities, because that’s something I’ve never seen in the UK is, for example, a blind person running an archery activity. So that was something really cool to see staff who were blind or visually impaired leading these activities. And finding out from them how they do it. And just realizing that actually this was expected of them. And that was really cool for me.
Jeff Thompson:
So being from the UK and at the camp in California, Napa, California, did you meet other volunteers from other places as well?
Holly:
Yes. There were a couple of volunteers that came from Australia. So one who was there for the whole summer. She was one of the area leaders. And then for teen session they actually brought a group of four teens from Australia. And that was really cool. And they brought staff with them as well. So that was really awesome.
Jeff Thompson:
Well yeah. I met up with the remnants of the Australian when I went out there. You must have just left as I was coming in for the woodworking [inaudible].
Holly:
Yeah. I left just before music camp.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh yeah. And that was a great event. That was really something. I didn’t know how it was going to pull off. And wow, once they got those music playing, it was really good stuff.
Holly:
Yeah. I heard it was great.
Crowd:
[inaudible]
Jeff Thompson:
So with your finals, and now you’re in your senior year, you’ve probably got pretty good experience going to school and using alternative techniques, alternative tools. What are your favorite tools that you use in school?
Holly:
I definitely evolved in how I use technology throughout university. I’ve approached it with a basic set of technology, and then changed that according to my needs. So my main piece of technology is a laptop with a screen reader. I am a Windows user. Never actually used a Mac. I know lots and lots of blind people swear by them. I’ve just never owned one. Because I use a Windows computer. The screen reader, that’s, I would say, an essential tool. I think a computer’s an essential tool for any student, whether you’re blind or not, these days.
Holly:
I also, in my first couple of years, I had a Braille display. So I had the Focus 40 from Freedom Scientific. I ended up swapping that out for a BrailleNote Touch recently, because I had decided that I wanted [inaudible] that I could also take notes on the move. And something that could replace my computer in certain situations. So they’re the two main things that I use.
Holly:
And then I use a lot of software. So I have ABBYY FineReader, which is an OCR piece of software. You can either scan stuff in to use with it. I mostly use it with PDFs that are scanned images to OCR on the computer. I have KNFB Reader on my phone to do the same thing if I get emailed something in class. And then I have an Apple phone, which obviously runs iOS. And I’m a VoiceOver user on that.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. The Apple phone has become kind of a … It’s almost embedded in my hand.
Holly:
Yeah. It’s pretty essential.
Jeff Thompson:
So Holly, with your experience, you’re on your way you, you’ve got that senioritis going. You’re probably itching to get out of there. What advice would you have for someone who is just starting to think about and consider college, university?
Holly:
I have a couple of pieces of advice. I think if it’s advice regarding choosing a university, I think don’t choose it based on your blindness. At least not to begin with. You’ve really got to choose it based on the course. So you could ask hundreds of blind students and they’ll all tell you what they think is the best university, and it’s not going to be the same. Because their needs might not be the same as yours, and they might be working within a different department.
Holly:
So go by what universities offer the program you really want to study. Do you want a university in a big city, or somewhere quite small? Think of those kinds of things. And then once you’ve got a few choices, go ahead and check them out and see how you feel about them. And I think you can decide a lot based on how people treat you when you arrive. So if you go to an open day, like a visit, and the people on your program who will be teaching you don’t speak to you, they speak to the person you’re with, and they seem very hesitant, that tells you a lot already about the kind of things you might experience when you go there. Yeah.
Holly:
As for once you’re there, I think two things. Firstly, you really need to understand your own needs and be able to self-advocate. So you can’t rely on disability services doing that for you. And I don’t think you should rely on them. I definitely make use of their services. The disabilities services department at my university is excellent. And if there’s something that I can’t resolve myself because it may be [inaudible] to someone to go through a higher up channel, I definitely reach out to them. And I also just reach out to them for advice, because they’re really good.
Holly:
But in terms of actually speaking to teaching staff, I do all of that because I obviously know what I need better than anyone else. And if I’m the one who’s approaching them to have these discussions, if they do have a query, they’re going to come to me rather than deferring to someone else. Because if that happens, you can get left out of conversations that are really essentially to your academic career.
Holly:
But secondly, in a nonacademic context, I think it’s really important to participate in recreational activities. So that could be joining a sports team, or a club, or anything that’s going on campus. And I’ve done a few of those while I’ve been at university. And a big benefit of that is that you’re going to meet a whole range of different people, and hopefully people who share a common interest with you. So it means you’re not just interacting with people who will be in your classes. You’re meeting people outside in a more informal setting. And I think there’s a lot of students who go, maybe struggle to make friends. And you can get quite lonely and isolated. But if you make a commitment to join these things from the beginning, it’s going to be a lot easier for you.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s some great advice. So you got six months coming up here. What are your plans as you aim towards graduation?
Holly:
I’ve first got to write my thesis.
Jeff Thompson:
A couple obstacles along the way.
Holly:
Yeah. That’s certainly the big thing at the moment. After that, upon graduation, I’m heading straight out to the US to attend a training program at the Colorado Center For Blind. So I’m doing their blindness skills training program, which is really, really exciting. So I’ll be out in Colorado for six months. And then after that I really need to get a job. It’s kind of the only thought in my mind. I really need to get a job.
Jeff Thompson:
Well that’ll be great experience going out to the NFB Center Colorado with Julie out there. I’m sure you’re going to be taking a lot of notes while you’re out there.
Holly:
Oh yeah. It’s going to give me a lot, I think, because certainly the way we approach orientation and mobility in the UK is not the same as the US. And I have been a guide dog handler for six and a half years. My dog will be retiring in mid-May. And then basically the day after she retires I’m heading to CCB. Which people are like, “Ooh, that’s very extreme.” And it is, but I think for me it’s the most important way to do it is not to let myself just get into a situation where I’m sad. [inaudible] going to be sad, because I’ll miss my dog. But I have to focus on something else.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. And you’ll learn some of the what some people call structured discovery that they practice at the centers.
Holly:
Yeah. And I’m really excited about that because we don’t have structured discovery in the UK. It’s not something that would ever be promoted. I wouldn’t say would ever. My hope is that it will be promoted in future, but currently it’s not something that anyone is advocating for apart from a very, very tiny group of people who know about it and think it’s a good idea. But in terms of professionals, there is basically nobody who wants it. And that’s quite unfortunate.
Jeff Thompson:
Well with your interest in your career goal of teaching blindness training and blindness students, this will be a great resource for you.
Holly:
Yeah, yeah. It’s going to be super helpful.
Jeff Thompson:
Especially even out in EHC or down in the San Francisco Bay Area, that’s a busy area.
Holly:
Yeah. And there’s a lot going on there with Lighthouse. Lighthouse has a lot of cool programs. And I didn’t know anything about Lighthouse before I came to EHC. Even once I found out about camp I was like, “I just care about camp. I want to go to camp.” I didn’t actually do a lot of research into Lighthouse. But once I found out more about it was like, “Oh, this is really interesting.” I got to meet people who work there. And that’s definitely been an experience that’s helped me a lot having these people as friends, but also as a blindness resource.
Jeff Thompson:
Now you actually toured the center, the Lighthouse for the Blind in San Francisco.
Holly:
Yes. Yeah, I did.
Jeff Thompson:
And that’s a fairly new center that they designed it for audio. Everything that went into it was blindness related. Can you describe it a little bit?
Holly:
Yeah. So the Lighthouse building is quite a big building, but the Lighthouse facilities are split over three floors within that building. The rest is other companies renting offices. And what I really thought was cool about the Lighthouse floors was that they’re absolutely designed with blindness in mind, but they’re not huge adaptations. They have Braille numbers on the doors, which is really important. It’s designed in what I would say is a sensible layout. It’s I would say reasonably easy to navigate and things like that. But it’s not like … You don’t show up and someone isn’t going to guide you around it and hold your hand and look after you. It’s very much designed so that blind people can have autonomy and independence, and that’s really important. And that, I think, is the most important part of the design is that it makes adaptations that are necessary, such as Braille signage. But it doesn’t turn it into a care facility.
Jeff Thompson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). What I notice by being out in San Francisco area and stuff with the Lighthouse is they’re really connected with the community. It seems like always there’s something going on. There’s always happenings. They’ve got great communication skills with their newsletters and stuff in it. It always pops up in my email and it’s like, “What’s going on now?”
Holly:
I know. They’re always doing stuff. It’s really cool.
Jeff Thompson:
Well you’ve got quite a lot going on here. Can I go back a little bit? When did you first start receiving, for school, a teacher for the visually impaired. How did you prepare when you were young?
Holly:
I guess you could say my story is quite interesting. I was diagnosed at eight months old. So that’s fairly early on as diagnosis goes. My older sister is fully sighted. Both my mom has a blind cousin and my dad has must be a second or a cousin of an uncle or something. I’m not sure what you call them. But they both have a blind person each side of their family, and nobody ever really thought anything of it.
Holly:
And then I came along. And so my parents were pretty surprised. We lived in the countryside. So we lived in a tiny, tiny village with less than 300 people living in it. So there weren’t really school services for anyone, let alone a blind child. So the preschools were ran out of a village hall or a church, and they were just ran by local moms or grandparents in the village. And it was decided that that wouldn’t be suitable for me.
Holly:
So I was actually sent to a preschool that was about 20 minutes away by car in the nearest town, and it was a school for children with disabilities. So all kinds of disabilities. But the really cool thing was from the age of two years old I had a TVI who only worked with me and one other student. So every day I was there, there was a TVI who was just split between two students. And that’s really, really rare-
Jeff Thompson:
Wow.
Holly:
For anyone to have that. Yeah. So I started to learn to read Braille when I was about two years old. So by the time I went into primary school at the age of four I could already fluently read grade one. So then from four onwards I was learning grade two Braille.
Holly:
And at the age of five my family moved to the other end of the country to a bigger city. And I went in to obviously change schools. And I still had really good TVI support. At five I was given a computer to start to learn to use. I started learning to use the screen reader when I was five. I could already touch type by the age of seven, seven and a half, maybe eight. I had finished learning to touch type, so all this happened really, really early on. And I was very, very luck with that side of blindness training.
Holly:
I also was receiving orientation and mobility classes. The one thing that I really think I wish had been done differently was I never used my cane outside those classes. So although I received O and M, I never actually used my cane, and my parents would never make me use my cane.
Jeff Thompson:
Really?
Holly:
Yeah. So I really grew up as a child who had no functional vision. I had light perception, but for any tasks it’s just not functional vision. And wasn’t using a cane. So I would just walk around my schools. If you’re somewhere all the time you just know the layout. So I would just walk around without a cane.
Holly:
And at 11 I transitioned to a school for the blind. And at that school I did again receive O and M. But actually at that school we were not permitted to use our canes within the school campus. Which people find really crazy. I went to a blind school with banned canes on campus. And the reason was because they felt like we’d trip each other over if we all were using canes. Which is just … I have feelings about that.
Jeff Thompson:
[inaudible] people making them rules.
Holly:
Yeah. I have feelings about that rule. Most kids there didn’t want to use their canes because we weren’t using them. So when we actually went out into the community we still didn’t have a positive relationship with using a cane.
Holly:
And I chose to leave that school at 16, not for that reason. I went back to mainstream school. And over the next year I realized a lot of things. That was a much, much bigger school. The last time I had been in mainstream school was an elementary school. Now I was in a really, really big secondary school, like a high school. And you can’t just walk around that without a cane. The halls are so much more crowded. It’s not one building. You’ve got to move from building to building outside. And the only way I could get around was literally by holding someone’s hand.
Holly:
And I was 16, 17 years old. And if my friends weren’t going in the same direction I needed to go to, I was effectively stuck because I was completely reliant on people. And I was someone who had a lot of ambition for the future. I really wanted to study abroad, and I wanted to do other stuff. And I realized I’m never going to do any of those things, because I can’t use a cane. And I don’t know what I’m doing.
Holly:
And so I then asked my local education authority for O and M training. And by this point when I was a small child we had an O and M instructor who was employed to work with children. But by the time I was older that position had been cut, and they were contracting with a local blindness agency. And I only received [inaudible] O and M sessions from them because they were already overwhelmed with their own clients and I just wasn’t considered a priority.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh wow.
Holly:
Yeah. So I was in a position where I was like, “Oh god, what am I going to do? I don’t know how to travel. I’m 17 years old, and I can’t spend the rest of my life holding someone’s hand.” And it had really taken really becoming very depressed and unhappy to realize that something in my life needed to change. Because until that point I had been in complete denial. I had been like, “No, I don’t need to use a cane. Canes are horrible. Canes are stupid. I don’t want to be seen with one. It’s embarrassing.” And then I realized actually it’s more embarrassing to be holding someone’s hand at 17.
Holly:
So what I ended up doing was applying for a guide dog. And through Guide Dogs for the Blind in the UK I received orientation mobility training with a cane in preparation for getting a guide dog. And that for me was the only way I could receive consistent cane instruction.
Holly:
So I received that, and I went on the list. And I ended up getting a guide dog. And it was a good guide dog handler because my travel skills themselves weren’t bad. I just had no experience using a cane. I could map in my head and I could do it. I just had never used a cane.
Holly:
And so I began working with my dog. And definitely working with a dog changed things for me. Not because guide dog travel is better, but because my guide dog mobility instructor really pushed me to be better. So when I was in training with my dog, I really vividly remember this, we were going into a store and getting assistance in a store and how to get your dog to follow the shop assistant. It’s a very important part of being a dog handler. And my instructor said, “Okay, here’s some money. Go into the store and buy me a bottle of Coke.” And I was like, “I can’t do that.” She’s like, “Why?” And I was like, “I feel really uncomfortable. I don’t want to speak to the person who works there. It’s just really embarrassing. I don’t want them to see me.” And she was like, “Well, if you don’t want them to see you, why am I giving you a dog? Why should I give you this dog? Why should you qualify with a dog guide?” And I thought about that and I was like, “I have to do this.”
Holly:
It wasn’t having a dog that changed it, it was that finally people were pushing me and giving me this kind of training that changed how I traveled.
Jeff Thompson:
pushing you out of your comfort zone.
Holly:
Yeah. And just giving me O and M instruction. And then interesting thing is a lot of blind people will tell you that having a dog has soured their relationship with a cane. They get a dog and they’re like, “I don’t really need a cane anymore.” For me it was the complete opposite. Having a dog has been really fun, and I love it. But it’s actually made my relationship with using a cane much more positive, because I have a much more positive relationship with myself and with blindness and travel overall. So now I’m way more likely to pick up a cane.
Holly:
There are some things that walking a dog in some situations is not the best. So if you want to explore an environment, for example, and you want to find out every single landmark, having a dog isn’t the best way to do that, because naturally your dog’s going to guide you around stuff. So now if I really want to explore I’ll just drop my dog’s harness handle or have her on a leash, just get her to heel, and use a cane to explore. And that’s something that I’ve never done before.
Holly:
So it’s kind of funny to me how I almost had the opposite experience of dog travel to everyone else. Because everyone’s like, “I never want my cane.” And I’m like, “I love using a cane now I have a dog.”
Jeff Thompson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s great that Guide Dogs UK has you do mobility before you go for the dog training.
Holly:
Yeah. They do their best to offer it to people. You do have to be able to demonstrate that you can travel a certain number of routes. And the criteria has recently got a lot stricter. The routes have a certain length, I think it’s 45 minutes or something, that they want you to demonstrate. To ensure that the dog’s going to be exercised enough.
Holly:
But what they would do is if you’re like, “Well, actually, I really want to have a guide dog, but my travel skills aren’t great. And I don’t qualify for O and M through anyone else,” which is very likely in England, they employ O and M instructors who come out and work with clients. And they might work with you if you have a dog. Maybe you’re asked to work with an O and M instructor on something. But equally they’ll work with people who want a dog. Or they work with children to give them good O and M skills so that hopefully in the future if they do want a dog they’ve got the skills. And if they don’t, then great, they’ve still got the skills.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. It was really neat. I was in [inaudible], and I met John Greedy. He’s from the Guide Dogs UK. And he was training a dog and they bring groups of people down there for I think a week or two, match them up. Because it offers them … There’s the train. There’s traffic. There’s crowds. There’s roads. And gives them a good feel. And sea dogs, they like to run the beaches. And it was just really neat to see that all happening at the Clifton Hotel at the time. It was really neat.
Holly:
Yeah. It’s used as one of the facilities in which when you get a dog you might be trained out of that facility. So it used to be that guide dogs did a lot of [inaudible]. So if you’re going way back, it used to be that guide dogs had their own training centers, much like GDB and the Seeing Eye and people like that do in the US. And then they got rid of all of those and they moved to predominantly home training.
Holly:
But now they’re actually producing a training course which we all have to follow so that everyone’s training will be exactly the same. And you all train out of a residential environment, but it’s invariably a hotel. And I’m pretty sure they use the Clifton Hotel for [inaudible]. So that’s really cool.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh that’s neat. So you’ll be retiring your dog, going to Colorado. Then the job market. So what are you doing in consideration for employment? Are you considering United States, the UK? Or are you wide open?
Holly:
I’m very open. I would love to work in the US, but the hardest thing is getting a visa. It’s very hard to just get a visa that will allow you to look for a job in the US. You really need to have some kind of … They call it extraordinary ability. So if I was qualified as a TVI, perhaps I could get that visa because it’s in such high demand.
Holly:
But as a recent graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish, I’m not going to get that visa. So I would rely on a company to actually sponsor me to come and work for them, which some companies will do. But it’s hard to get that. So I would love to say I would work in the US actually, but I’m realistic in that I will be applying for jobs in the UK when my time at Colorado comes to a close. Because what I really need to do is ensure that I’m financially stable. And that is the most important thing at the moment.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah. Having the skills to teach O and M or to teach blindness training at a center, plus to have multiple language skills. California, Denver, there’s a lot of Spanish speaking there too. So not to encourage you to come over here and work, but …
Holly:
I want to. I really want to.
Jeff Thompson:
It’s going to be wide open for you. And you’re creating the opportunities for yourself by going to the university, getting your degrees. And then going to one of the centers here is going to be awesome. I’ve known a lot of people that have … I used to teach at Blind Incorporated here in Minneapolis, woodworking. So it’s a neat experience. You get to meet so many people. You’ll be going as a student at the time?
Holly:
Yes, I will be.
Jeff Thompson:
And then there’s always volunteer opportunities again.
Holly:
Yeah. Something will come up. I’m confident that something will happen. I don’t know what, and in some ways that’s kind of cool. I think if I made a really rigid five year plan it would never happen anyway, because life is like that. Life takes you in all directions. And what I try and do is just be open to an opportunity and think, “Well, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this opportunity again, so I’m going to take it.” And go with how life wants me to go.
Jeff Thompson:
That’s great. Take those opportunities when they come. What do they say? Opportunities knock but once, but temptation leans against the doorbell? So you got to jump at those opportunities. It seems like you’re doing it. You always wanted to go to a summer camp, and you got that out of the way. You’re graduating. You’re going to go to the CCB.
Holly:
Yeah. I’m lucky. I’ve studied abroad twice, and CCB will be a third time. A completely different kind of studying abroad. But like I said, at 17 I wanted those things, but I was not in a position where I could have made it happen.
Jeff Thompson:
Now look at you.
Holly:
Yeah. The changes have been pretty significant.
Jeff Thompson:
Well good for you. So if someone wanted to follow your blog or follow you on social media, where would they find Holly Scott-Gardner?
Holly:
My blog is CatchTheseWords.com. My Twitter handle is @CatchTheseWords. So is my Instagram. You can find me on YouTube at CatchTheseWords. I also have a Facebook profile, same name. It’s very easy to find me, I just use the same name everywhere.
Jeff Thompson:
I Googled you and it was the first thing that popped up, so there you go. It’s nice to have three names like that.
Holly:
Yes.
Jeff Thompson:
Well Holly, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. I know you got finals coming up. Good luck with your finals. Good luck with all your endeavors that you’re doing. You’re doing a great job. And people, if you’re listening, go check out her blog. She’s always on there sending out messages. Some are really interesting. But if you got something, you seem to say it. And I like that, I really do.
Holly:
Thanks. Thank you so much.
Jeff Thompson:
All right. Thanks a lot Holly.
Holly:
Thank you for having me.
Jeff Thompson:
Such a great time talking to Holly Scott-Gardner. And be sure to check out her blog and follow her on social media @CatchTheseWords. And be sure to check out all the Blind Abilities podcast with the blindness perspective. From the show’s job insights, tech abilities, That Blind Tech Show, and the series on iPhone 101, and much, much more. There’s something there for everyone. And don’t forget about the Blind Abilities skill on your Amazon device just by saying, “Enable Blind Abilities.”
Jeff Thompson:
And a big thank you to CheeChau for your beautiful music. You can follow CheeChau on Twitter @LcheeChau.
Jeff Thompson:
Once again, I want to thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed. And until next time, bye bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff Thompson:
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