Have you ever started the school year worried about all the classes you have to take and just felt overwhelmed? If not, do you ever feel like there’s that one class you might hate because it seems boring or overly hard? If not, that’s fine—but I definitely did for my fall 2025 semester. I’m currently taking a class taught in American Sign Language (ASL) about Deaf history and culture.
I love learning ASL, but I’m not a big fan of history since my past history classes have either been boring or felt overwhelming with all the information I had to remember and know. So of course I assumed this class would be the same, and I started getting a little worried. Now as the semester is coming to an end, I find it funny that one of my favorite classes this semester happens to be the class I thought I would dread taking. So let me tell you how the class I anticipated to be my worse class semester turned into one of my favorites.
My Feeling Towards History Before This Class
In middle school and high school, I always enjoyed math and science classes a lot more than English and history. With English, I knew how to navigate my way through the class to understand the material and do well. But I only liked reading things I chose to read, not what I was forced to read for class. Even though that’s how I felt about English, I could still tolerate it and even enjoy being in the class sometimes. When it came to history, it was a different story.
History—specifically U.S. history—always felt repetitive and filled with all these important dates and people I had to remember and read about, but I never learned it in a way that actually immersed me in the subject. It felt like I was there just because I had to be there, not because I wanted to or enjoy being there. Classes like this makes me dread the time spent in the class and had me always looking at the clock waiting for the class to finish. Since this was my experience growing up I didn’t ever want to do a history class in college. Since the schedule I wanted didn’t allow me to take another ASL class elective, so I ended up in a history culture class.
My Deaf History & Culture Class
The first day of my history class was an overview of the syllabus and an introduction to what we would be covering throughout the semester. As I listened to the syllabus, I realized this history class was nothing like the ones I took before. This class had almost weekly presentations, with a different presenter coming in to talk about their Deaf experiences growing up and touching on many different topics (e.g., the LGBTQ+ Deaf community, cochlear implants, children of Deaf adults). Having in-person interactions with people from within the Deaf community explaining their own history helped me stay fully immersed in what I was learning about Deaf history and culture.
There was also a required trip to the Rochester School of the Deaf museum, which I thought was interesting because I couldn’t remember the last time I went to a museum for a history class. Visiting this museum was a great and new experience for me because I had never gone to a museum and experienced the entire visit in ASL. I definitely suggest going if you ever get the chance.
For me, being informed about historical experiences from the Deaf community themselves helped me understand how important learning about Deaf history and culture is to the world. My favorite part about learning from the Deaf community was being able to ask a lot of questions and really understand what I was learning.
My Feeling Towards History After This Class
After taking this class, I realized that I never actually disliked history; I just disliked how it was taught to me. For me, being able to engage with and interact with the people history has impacted, and hearing their stories directly, helps me understand why learning history is so important. This class has helped me understand how I like to learn history and information in general, and I deeply value that because it’s something I can use for the rest of my life. It helped me learn things about history that I never even considered to be relevant to my day-to-day life, but are actually way more significant than I ever thought before taking this class.
My Advice & Thoughts
If you’re ever taking a class that you think you won’t enjoy for whatever reason, I say give the class a chance before deciding you don’t or won’t like it. Sometimes when you assume you won’t like something, you end up missing out on all the things you could enjoy about that class.