This week at AFB

This week I had a really cool experience. I am the Vice President for the Disability Alliance and we had a speaker come in who is a blind lawyer working in the federal government. She was able to give us a lot insight about generally getting into the federal government and doing it with a disability. We talked about how hard it can be to walk a fine line between explaining your disability to people and the needs that are associated, while still maintaining a level of respect and not feeling like you are a burden to people. She did not know a lot about technology for blind people though and just kind of used whatever was available, particularly with cell phones. One of my projects at my internship is revisiting a whole list of complainants to the FCC about cell phone use and another is working on some things like a facebook group, going to hill meetings, etc., for the Coalitions of Organizations for Assistive Technology. So cellphones is actually something I know about for blind people and I was able to talk to her about some of this. It was so cool! She was really impressed that I was interning and how much I had learned and was able to share with her.

This to me is an example of leadership. This sort of exchange of ideas is so key and being able to share resources. I thought it was so cool though that I am learning enough in my internship that I could tell someone else about it. This really speaks to the nature of the leaders I work with at AFB because if they weren't doing such a great job training me, then I may not be as well informed about the issues and solution efforts tat are currently happening. The ultimate form of compliment, people say, is imitation so tat I can imitate and even expand upon what I have been tough I think is the ultimate compliment to the organization I am working for.

That experience really taught me a lot and the personal connections sort of reinvigorated my interest in the legislation and the efforts because I could talk to someone who it really helped. She was really excited abotu what I was telling her and that in turn made me really excited.