Darth Bane

I am a visually impaired junior at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama of the united States of America. I have lived poor my entire life and am in college for the sole purpose to rise into mild standings in income as others. Mine more so than others because only a third of all visually impaired people are even employeed and only about a tenth of us graduate from college and even more only five percent get jobs. This is simular even in Britain and throughout the world. I can't read books in conventential means. Can anyone help me out with advice? I feel alone and wholely inadaquate at times towards what I call " the ******* vision closed minded mfers". I can't seem to get my head above water and keep drifting further into a dark whirlpool of broken dreams. I have come from a long line of poverty striken and depressed people with drug addicts, alcoholics and so on. If you have a fiber of intelligence or help let me please rise above this lifesyle that I was born into.

whypatcondellisntfun

Well, this is a sad story to read. But it seems that you are already on the right track in attempting to turn your life around. A university education is no easy thing to achieve at the best of times and so I congratulate you on even getting that far regardless of your vision impairment.

Now then. As for advice.

Don't give up. Don't give in, even when other people are putting barrier after barrier in your way. It is a cliche that the difference between winners and losers is the amount of times winners pick themselves up. Winners actually fail more often than losers… because winners pick themselves up and try again, then keep trying. Losers just give up. I know it's cheesy, but I believe it. My background wasn't great, my hometown was pretty deprived and my family had their fair share of problems. I had to overcome some odds myself to achieve anything, the only thing that made a difference was that I kept on going when others told me I couldn't and when I knew they believed that I wouldn't amount to anything. Not only that, I had many friends that I knew where far more intelligent than me, and could have done great things, but they just fell into that small-town mentality of believing that they could never achieve anything beyond what they already knew. You have to break out of that mentality. You are not other people, you are your own person, following your own route.

Either cut the negative people out of your life, or patiently ignore them and follow your own track. They will drag you down out of sheer force of pitting their will against yours. I understand that it's difficult to think about that when the negative people are your own family.

Try to find an organisation that can help you specifically, in the UK we have the RNIB which exists specifically to help the visually impaired, is there an equivalent US organisation that can advise you?

Sorry, I can't be much more help than that, I'm no expert in these things. I feel for you. I have a relative who has a physical disability which makes things very difficult for her, but she is doing the same thing as you and went off to get educated.

Just keep on going, stay positive and work hard. Eventually you will begin to pull good things into your life and expel the negative things.

Now I sound like some life coach! Take care.

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"I have set and always will set my face like flint against making any difference between one citizen of this country and another on grounds of his origin" - Enoch Powell

John Connor

Well Sith, the first thing that can be said is that there's no way you're alone. You mention that you feel this way and also feel inadequate but here's the thing - sighted people very often feel this way too. So don't feel like you're totally alone, dude - just keep it n mind that almost everyone feels the way you do at various points in their lives.

Now, as for getting on. The main thing is to go for it and get some gritty determination behind you. Then it's a case of finding out what you want to do which is realistic and within your abilities (exactly the same advice applies to sighted people). Then just get and do it. Brainstorm, come up with ideas.
What about running some kind of support web site for blind people? What about getting involved that way? You know, bunch of people getting together to give each other support and stuff like that.

__________________
There are three types of people in this world: Libertarians, fascists and those who haven't been paying attention.

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Ea of Dune

Darth> Do you use the JAWS piece of software by any chance? I've worked on a lot of software that will be used by blind people and we always test against the JAWS screen reader.
If you can get hold of a copy of it I thoroughly recommend it(if you are not already using it).

Ea of dune