Ruth Aspland is a familiar person at Hearts For Sight outings. HFS always welcomes her smiling presence at the outings. Ruth is in the spotlight this month because of her educational accomplishments. Although the classes were hard, especially the ones that were very visual, she is graduating from Cerritos College with a 4.0 GPA, and is completing her application to attend Cal State Long Beach. Her goal is to earn an MSW and become a social worker.
Life has not been easy for Ruth. She was born legally blind due to congenital glaucoma but still was a diligent student in high school. She took AP classes and was on the honor roll. She remembers her high school counselor helping her complete the college applications and handing the envelope to Ruth to mail. But Ruth knew that due to her financial circumstances, she would not be able to attend college. So, on her way home, with tears in her eyes, she threw the college applications in a trashcan.
Fast forward a few years. Ruth now had a family, 2 children and a job as a special ed teacher’s aide. She still liked learning new things and school was still on her mind. She felt sad she could not attend. Until one day, Ruth heard that the Department of Rehabilitation (DOR) could help her get a better job. She almost missed the meeting with them, but luckily, she did make it. It was meant to be!! Her DOR counselor saw her potential and recommended continuing school and helped her set her educational and career goals. This was now possible because DOR could pay for her schooling
and provide her the assistive technology needed.
Ruth has been a trailblazer in her college. Some professors were doubtful that she could complete her classes successfully which made it very stressful. But, with her focus and the help of technology, she was able to change their minds and “show them” so that the next time a blind person came along, they would keep a little more of an open mind.
Ruth found that the campus computers (even the lab in the disability office) had the license for the technology to help her but had not programmed the computers. Due to Ruth’s persistence, they installed JAWS and FUSION, which would be helpful to other disabled students as well.
In the course of her studies, there were times when Ruth had a lot of anxiety because some professors made it clear that they did not think she would succeed in their classes. She says that being part of Hearts For Sight definitely gave her motivation to be successful in college. In her words:
“In those hard moments, in my mind I thought about all my HFS friends from the
outings and our conversations. They knew I was in school and everybody was so
encouraging, saying they knew I would do well. So, when I felt like giving up and
leaving a classroom, I would say, ‘I can’t run out like a little girl. I have all my
friends supporting me and I’m not going to let this professor discourage me. I’m
going to show her that we can do it.’ Being with other blind friends in HFS gatherings
is empowering because I feel that when you hang out with people that can understand
the difficulties that you go through and then they praise you for the good job that you
are doing, because they know how hard it is, they know the struggles, that is
motivating. Whenever I start feeling like it is too hard, I remind myself that I have a
lot of people encouraging me and supporting me. I can’t just leave, it’s not an option
for me to just give up. I have to keep going.”
A shoutout to Ruth and HFS.