If you don’t mind answering this question, I was just wondering why did you decide to become an asl interpreter?
I don’t mind at all!
The “Why do you want to become an interpreter” question has a pretty basic answer really; I like connecting people that may not have been able to communicate before and solving puzzles with language.
Long version: I had a friend in middle school who was learning sign language and I thought it was cool. Ended up taking some classes locally. When I got into college, I needed a foreign language and I didn’t really like spanish (sorry my spanish speaking peeps It just doesn’t stick in my brain the way other languages do) So I took ASL 1 and 2. And I loved it!
I thought I was going to go for elementary education, but I just found myself taking ASL classes. I was just like “I’ll follow this path until I figure out what I REALLY want to do.”
Lol turns out THAT was what I really wanted to do.
So I got my AS in Sign Language Interpreting and went to another school to get my BS in it as well. I wanted to minor in linguistics, but there were some stupid state laws that didn’t allow it :( [I would have gone over my credit-hour limit and they would have had to charge me 250% the tuition to finish]
tbh I’m not a working interpreter right now because my program was all kind of demanding and stressful and so fucking hard and I never even got to have my graduation and some other mental health stuff just formed a big ole knot in that department. BUT I still love signing and the language itself so I won’t be away for too long.
I want to do conference interpreting and video relay (think facetime an interpreter) but we’ll see.