{"id":81237,"date":"2019-02-08T16:31:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T16:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/?p=431221"},"modified":"2019-02-08T16:31:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T16:31:57","slug":"lessons-from-the-south-side-the-dad-who-helped-raise-an-empathetic-engineer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/02\/08\/lessons-from-the-south-side-the-dad-who-helped-raise-an-empathetic-engineer\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from the South Side: The dad who helped raise an empathetic engineer"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

One day,\u00a0young\u00a0Heather\u00a0came home from junior high school\u00a0with\u00a0an idea. She\u2019d often\u00a0toss out ideas\u00a0to her father for what she could be when she grew up. Back then, he was endearingly\u00a0tough to please, she remembered. Not in an unloving way, but in a way that\u00a0emboldened\u00a0Heather\u00a0to challenge\u00a0herself.<\/p>\n

Her dad was reading in his tattered,\u00a0gray arm chair. She touched his arm gently and signed,\u00a0\u201cDad!\u00a0What if I become\u00a0a\u00a0sign-language\u00a0interpreter?\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u00a0peered at her over his\u00a0book, set it down,\u00a0and signed,\u00a0\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat? I thought you\u2019d be excited. I\u2019ve been interpreting for you and mom my whole life,\u201d\u00a0she pressed. \u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToo\u00a0safe\u00a0for you,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Royce. \u201cBelieve in yourself.\u00a0Do what makes you uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n

While\u00a0Heather\u00a0walked out of the room thinking\u00a0that\u00a0it\u00a0was\u00a0strange that he wouldn\u2019t want her to choose interpreting as a career, she knew\u00a0that\u00a0he was right.\u00a0So even though she interpreted for then-president Barack Obama during a 2015 national monument dedication in Chicago,\u00a0she respected his\u00a0commitment to working hard for the sake of the family. So,\u00a0she would keep looking for something that challenged her.<\/p>\n

*****<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

After her sophomore year of high school,\u00a0Heather\u00a0went to\u00a0a summer engineering program at Chicago State University. There, she got to dig in\u00a0to the hardware of all the gadgets\u00a0that\u00a0she loved. As she\u00a0soldered the circuit board for a phone, she thought\u00a0about how so many people\u00a0who have\u00a0hearing loss,\u00a0at that time, couldn\u2019t\u00a0use the phone easily\u2014the feedback on hearing aid devices made\u00a0people\u00a0on the other end of the line sound like they\u00a0were\u00a0in a construction zone.\u00a0\u201cWow, I could make accessible technology and really change people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, I\u00a0never\u00a0take it for granted that I can send my dad a text if he doesn\u2019t see me standing at the door. The world of pagers and\u00a0mobile\u00a0phones really changed our world,\u201d Heather said.<\/p>\n

It turns out\u00a0that\u00a0there was a name for being an inventor of technology for people\u00a0who are\u00a0Deaf or\u00a0hard-of-hearing.\u00a0She came home that summer and told her dad, \u201cEngineer. I\u2019m going to be an engineer.\u201d At that point,\u00a0Heather\u00a0had never\u00a0heard of any\u00a0female, black engineers. Surely that qualified as uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

Royce\u00a0said\u00a0nothing,\u00a0his\u00a0kind\u00a0eyes narrowing\u00a0in on hers. He smirked,\u00a0shrugged,\u00a0and then walked down the narrow hallway to rest up for\u00a0the\u00a0evening\u2019s shift at the post office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One day,\u00a0young\u00a0Heather\u00a0came home from junior high school\u00a0with\u00a0an idea. She\u2019d often\u00a0toss out ideas\u00a0to her father for what she could be when she grew up. Back then, he was endearingly\u00a0tough to please, she remembered. Not in an unloving way, but in a way that\u00a0emboldened\u00a0Heather\u00a0to challenge\u00a0herself. Her dad was reading in his tattered,\u00a0gray arm chair. She touched his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81238,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[63,50],"class_list":["post-81237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft-news","tag-accessibility","tag-recent-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}