By Hannah Furney

Being blind means that I can do anything that I put my mind to except driving.  My mother, who was coming to wake me up from a nap, discovered my eye condition, and she had noticed that my eyes were going back and forth, so she knew that something was wrong.  My parents took me to the eye doctor and Bilateral Retinoblastoma was diagnosed at age four-and-a-half months.  Since 2007, I have been a member of the NFB where I have learned to consider myself blind.

I was a student at Blindness: Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND) Incorporated in 2010.  I look back to when we were at national convention and all of the staff and students sang a song, in which two words stood out to me.  The words were independence and confidence.  Those words are the reason that I decided to come to BLIND, Incorporated.  I knew that I lacked some of the skills to be independent and have confidence in myself.

Many situations have tested my thoughts and abilities towards independence and confidence, but I will mention two in particular.  The first was when I was in industrial arts class, I needed to use a screwdriver, and I have never used one before.  I was not sure if I could learn how to use one.  However, I was able to learn even though it took me the entire class time to learn how to use the screwdriver.  That experience helped to improve my confidence and my independence.  Next time I need to use a screwdriver, I will know how to work it and I will not have to ask a sighted person to help me use the screwdriver.  I am happy that I learned that skill.

The next situation was when we went camping in the summer.  We were to choose between several activities that included tubing, canoeing, fishing, or hiking.  I said to myself that I have done all of those things except for tubing down a river, and that it might be somewhat scary, but I would like to try it.  When Shawn Mayo mentioned what everyone's activity was going to be, she came to my name and said "Hannah is going to be going tubing.”  I was in a group with George, Steve, two students in the Life 101 program, and two from the Buddy Program.  The way that the group was set up, I was with Steve.  I was happy that my tube was tied to his tube because I was a bit scared about doing this activity.

Well, I was doing pretty well, and trying not to be too scared, and then our tubes hit something.  We discovered that there was a tree between our two tubes and one in front of us.  I was trying to stay as calm as possible, because I had a bad canoeing experience before, and I did not want it to end up like that again.  Steve jumped out of his tube to look at the situation at hand, and so he had to hang onto a tree branch for a bit.  We tried to figure out how to get ourselves untangled, while we were thinking about it I was yelling the other group members’ names.  Then finally George was coming our way, he was coming the wrong way down the river to help us.  Right before he got to us, we figured out that we could get the branch that was between our tubes to go down in the water.  Then when he got there he helped to get us untangled the rest of the way.  From that experience, I gained confidence and independence.  That really showed me a big lesson that if a blind person is stuck in a tubing situation or any type of situation that they are able to get themselves unstuck from that difficult situation.

I know that not many people get to come to BLIND Incorporated, so I am very thankful that I was able to come here.  I knew that I needed the training, so I did everything I knew I had to do in order to come.  For example, I stopped going to college in Ohio, got up, and moved to Minnesota.  In order to go on in life with my plans I knew that I needed the independence and confidence in myself.  By coming to BLIND, Incorporated, I gained those two aspects in my life so that I can be a more successful person who happens to be blind.