Twenty-three-year-old RFB&D student member Beth Smaligo has the double challenge of being blind and having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)... but don't let that fool you. Beth is also planning her first solo trip to California in 2011, where she will chronicle RFB&D from the inside, making an audio documentary of the staff and volunteers that have inspired her throughout her educational journey.
The project is called, From the Inside Door: RFB&D in California. The vivacious Beth, a University of Pittsburgh junior, is double-majoring in literature and communication. In usual "Beth fashion," she recently celebrated being inducted into Sigma Tau Delta, the international English honor society.
Beth has been a member of RFB&D since she was nine years old. She used to obtain most of her books in Braille, but college credit courses in her last year in high school led her to need RFB&D's audio textbooks more and more. She loves the fact that she gets her textbooks on line, or as she says, "Click, click! And then I do a search, and the books ship right to my house." In fact, Beth has now borrowed so many RFB&D audio textbooks that she can't even come up with a ballpark number!
Beth shared that, because of her ADD, others thought that audio textbooks would be impossible for her to use as a study tool. But as she tells us, "The human voice of RFB&D's audio books is what held my attention. I can study for two hours at a time!" This semester, her courses include Renaissance in England and 19th Century British Literature, and she is reading books like "Wuthering Heights" and "Frankenstein" from RFB&D's audiobook library.
Beth says she wishes more people knew about RFB&D so that many more students could benefit. Even so, Beth is her own personal "PR machine," acting as an ambassador for RFB&D to make sure more people know which organization helped her begin to reach her dreams.
Besides her planned audio documentary, Beth recounts recently meeting a friend who shared that she had dyslexia. Beth promptly got her to sign up for RFB&D! We are grateful to this student role model for spreading the word about RFB&D, and we congratulate her on her academic and personal success.
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