Hearing Loss Help  

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A mother wrote,

My 3 year old daughter has profound hearing loss in both ears. She is currently using digital hearing aids and has therapy regularly. Lately, we have discovered that she has lost more hearing in her right ear, and has stopped responding on that side.

I am at a total loss on how to proceed at this point. Her lack of hearing has now affected her speech. I’ve read about cochlear implants, but I am not sure if CIs would be a good option, or even whether she would be eligible for a CI.

You have written that you have a severe loss, but in spite of that, you went to school and earned a couple of doctorates. Please teach me what I can do to make my child’s life better. I want her to have a future.

Of course you want your daughter to have a future, and with a caring mother like you, she will have!

The first thing you should do is check out whether you can get a more powerful hearing aid for her right ear if that will help. If not, since she has a profound hearing loss in her left ear, and hears little or nothing in her right ear, she is very likely a suitable candidate for a cochlear implant. This is something you should investigate now while the hearing regions in her brain are still “plastic”. If she gets a CI soon enough, she will likely develop her hearing (vocabulary) and speech almost normally.

In the meantime, you can teach her how to successfully cope with her hearing loss. There are many coping strategies. One important coping strategy, and one I used all though school, is speechreading (previously called lipreading). I learned to speechread on my own by always watching the faces of whomever was speaking, whether my parents, siblings, friends, classmates, teachers, etc. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on the floor staring up at people—trying to speechread what they were saying.

To make speechreading possible, when you talk to her, always get close—within a couple of feet—face her and speak slowly and clearly so she can speechread you. Make sure that anyone talking to her does the same. She needs to see what they are saying.

Don’t expect her to hear/understand you if you are close and facing her. It is also important to have adequate light when you are talking with her so she can clearly see to speechread. Obviously, talking to her in the dark is out.

Another coping strategy I used was reading. I was a voracious reader and used to read 3 full-length books a day PLUS do my homework all through middle and high school. That way I learned a lot from books that helped make up for the things I missed in school and in social situations. (My hard of hearing daughter was also a voracious reader while she was growing up.)

You also should investigate the many devices that are available to help her hear better, and the devices that can warn her about things going on around her (fire alarm, doorbell, phone, etc.) Assistive devices can generally either work alone, or with the t-coils on her hearing aids. Such devices are most useful in difficult listening situations such as in noisy places, or when she is at some distance from the speaker.

One short, easy-to-read book that will help get you started in the right direction is Talking with Hard of Hearing People—Here’s How to Do It Right!

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A concerned mother asked:

Our audiologist has said our 6- year-old daughter might benefit from using an FM receiver in the classroom since she is almost deaf in one ear. My husband and I are unsure if this is a wise course. If we introduce hearing devices early in her physical development (she is only in Grade 1), are we preventing her brain from learning to compensate for hearing loss in one ear? Will we make her dependent on a device unnecessarily, or are we sparing her from years of frustration and lost learning opportunities? Thank you so very much for your advice.

If your daughter had a bad eye, would you prevent her from wearing glasses so she could learn to live with the good eye compensating for the bad one, or would you have her wear glasses to help her see the best she can, even though she would be dependent on glasses for the rest of her life?

I think you know the answer. The same applies to ears. Let her use any and all devices that help her hear better, and thereby avoid making things unnecessarily hard for her. It is hard enough coping as it is when you only hear in one ear.

In fact, several studies have shown that children with single-sided deafness do poorer academically in the classroom than their hearing peers. Thus you want to get her all the help you can so she can perform at her real “mental” level, rather than at her lower “hearing” level.

She will have plenty of opportunities to learn how to cope with single-sided deafness in her everyday life. For example, if she sleeps with her bad ear up, she won’t hear the alarm clock, or you calling her to wake up. If she learns to sleep on her other side with her bad ear in the pillow, then she will be able to hear anytime in the night with her good ear.

When riding in the car, she should sit with her good ear towards the center of the car—not to the window. This way she will be much better able to hear what people are saying in the car. Similarly, when walking with friends, she should walk to the left of her friends (assuming her left ear is her deaf ear) so her good (right) ear is towards them. Little things like this can make all the difference in her ability to hear and understand in everyday situations.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained:

I lost my hearing when I was 26. I even tried a cochlear implant, but I’m still deaf. I need to learn sign, but since I don’t have a job, I have very limited income. I need a free way, let me repeat “free” way to learn sign so I can at least join the deaf community and get friends, a job, a life worth living again! I’ve found schools but all are talking about fees. I can’t pay fees without a job. I can’t get a job without knowing sign. Please help me.

I’m not sure why you think you need to learn to sign in order to get a job. Very few, if any, people on the job know how to sign so they wouldn’t be able to communicate with you anyway.

Since you had hearing to age 26, I assume you have good speech skills and people understand you well. Therefore, all you need to do is be able to understand them. You can do this by speechreading (lip reading) them, having them gesture where appropriate, and have them write down whatever you still miss.

Depending on the job, your boss/coworkers can email you or instant message or text you and you reply back. You don’t need hearing to communicate this way. Thus, there are many things you can do in order to communicate without learning sign.

Now, I’m certainly not against learning to sign—as long as you have people that can sign back to you—family, friends, coworkers, etc.

There are several sources of free signing classes. The most likely is a church near you that has a deaf ministry. Very often they offer free signing classes.

Another source of free signing classes are agencies that work with deaf people. In my county, the Lutheran Social services run a “deaf center” and offer sign language classes. When I took ASL classes there, if you were deaf or hard of hearing, you could attend free.

A third option is to find a deaf person that is willing to teach you some sign. Become friends with them. That is what my daughter did to help her improve her signing. Some deaf people are wonderful and willing to help you when they see you really want to learn to sign.

Another option, if you can prove that learning sign will help you get a job, is the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (or whatever name they go under in your state). They may fund signing classes for you.

So there are some free, live hands-on ways to learn signing.

In addition to these, some agencies that work with deaf people have signing videos that you can borrow—either VCR tapes or CDs or DVDs.

Then, too, your library may have some signing CDs or DVDs in their collection, or if you ask, may be willing to get some for you.

Also, you can find good on-line signing websites. There are a number of these.

Here is two such websites: http://www.lifeprint.com

and http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi.

Here’s a good one to learn/practice fingerspelling.

These should get you started.

Just be aware that to become fluent in signing, it will take you several years of constant work. It is learning a new language and that takes lots of time and practice.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man asked:

I have a question about hearing strategies. Say you’re in a room and you’re trying to understand something. I’m wondering if I should learn how to read lips. It doesn’t seem like it could hurt. Do you need to take a course, or just practice?

How about if you try and guess what’s just been said? I find I do this. After I hear someone say something, and I don’t quite get it all, my brain reviews possibilities until it matches one that makes sense in the context of the situation and what else has been said.

By all means learn to speechread! Speechreading is most important in helping you understand speech better. I have been speechreading all my life. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the floor and staring up at the faces of those giant people (parents) towering above me (at least they sure seemed tall to me way back then) and watching their faces so I could understand what they were saying.

Both my younger daughter and I became good speechreaders when we were tiny tikes. It was a coping strategy we both just naturally picked up from necessity at a very early age. We were both good speechreaders by the time we were 3 or 4.

To become good at speechreading you need to practice. In fact, you need lots of practice. If you are around me you’ll notice I always “stare” at the person with whom I am conversing. That is how I hear and understand what they are saying. Of course, I’m using my residual hearing too, but I’ve constantly been “practicing” speechreading for more than 60 years now.

Taking a speechreading course can help you fast-track your speechreading skills and get you on the right track. Unfortunately, speechreading classes are hard to find—but if you have one in your area, by all means enroll in one.

If there aren’t any speechreading classes near you, all is not lost. There are some good speechreading CDs available so you can practice in the privacy of your own home in front of your computer. This way you can practice at your own convenience and for as long or short a time as you want. Furthermore, your computer will never get tired or exasperated at you if you make a mistake, or ask it to repeat something a “million times”!

Probably the best speechreading CD around is the Seeing and Hearing Speech CD program.

Speechreading is not perfect by any means. The best estimates are that only around 30% to 35% of English sounds can be speechread. That leaves a lot of room for educated guessing. The more you know of the structure of English, and the topic under discussion, the better your “educated guessing” becomes.

When we speechread, our brains run through the possibilities we see and hear and tries to give us the most likely word we missed. However, it can come up with completely wrong solutions because of several factors.

For example, if we don’t know the context, we can’t put things in context to get the right word. Or, if we have the wrong context, our brains will try to fit what we see (speechread) into this “wrong” context and come up with totally “off the wall” solutions as to what has just been said.

Furthermore, many words in English have identical mouth shapes, although the words sound different (if you could hear them). Thus depending on your mindset at the moment, you may “see” a different word than what was said—and again come up with an “off the wall” interpretation.

We call such words homophenes. The three words “pat”, “bat” and “mat” are examples of homophenes. So are the words “shoot”, “shoes”, “chews”, “juice” and “Jews”. So are the words “queen” and “quiet”. You cannot tell these words apart unless you can either hear the difference, or you are sure you know the context.

“Is this process made easier if you know what sounds people with a rare hearing loss such as a reverse slope hearing loss often miss? So you think, ‘well, I usually can’t hear these sounds, so chances are the word I missed was _____.”

You know, in all the years I have been speechreading myself and all the years I have been teaching and writing about speechreading, this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone ask this question. It’s a wonderful question—and just as those of us with severe reverse slope hearing losses hear “backwards” to those with the common ski-slope losses, so also we also speechread “backwards”—thus there are notable differences. Let me explain.

People with the common ski-slope hearing losses hear lower frequency sounds reasonably well, but do not hear high- frequency sound well or at all.

Furthermore, you need to realize that most of the “power” or volume of speech is contained in the lower-frequency sounds, while most of the “intelligence” in speech is carried in the higher- frequency sounds.

Since people with ski-slope losses hear the lower-frequency sounds, but not the higher-frequency sounds, they generally hear people talking, but can’t understand what they are saying.

This is where speechreading helps them. You see, typically, the higher frequency sounds such as “s”, “f”, “th”, “ch” and “t” (all air hissing around your teeth with your voice box turned off) are relatively easy to see so you can speechread them well. Thus you can fill in the missing “intelligence sounds” and understand what the person is saying.

In contrast, those of us with severe reverse-slope hearing losses don’t hear the lower-frequency sounds (which are formed in the middle or back of the mouth so are hard or impossible to speechread), but we hear the higher-frequency sounds which are also relatively easy to speechread, thus we have more difficulty in speechreading. As a result, we have to concentrate on learning to speechread the “difficult” sounds in order to become good speechreaders.

In any case, even though speechreading is more difficult for us, it is still an indispensable skill to have, and one I’d never want to be without.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A student wrote:

I am a senior in college and have had single-sided deafness since birth. I coped with my hearing loss fairly well, although I do not know what it is like to hear with both ears.

The reason I’m writing you is because I have a problem I’d like your help with. I’ve realized that I mishear and mispronounce certain words. I put in a lot of effort in order to make sure I don’t make mistakes in my presentations or at formal meetings. However, I will soon graduate from my university. What I am worried about is that this problem will negatively affect me in the future—during job interviews, for example.

Are there any techniques I can use in order to solve this problem? I know about sitting with my good ear in the general direction of the speaker, and directly facing the speaker, but is there any way I can boost my ability to comprehend what people are saying better, and also not mess up what I am saying at the same time?

I realize this is an odd question, but I would greatly appreciate your help.

Actually, this is a very good question, one more people should ask.

The problems you are facing are not unique to people with single-sided deafness. They affect most hard of hearing people too. I’ve struggled with these same problems myself.

There are a number of things you can do to help yourself.

First, consider getting some sort of hearing aid that pipes the sounds from your deaf side to your good ear. There are a number of devices you could consider. The BAHA (bone anchored hearing aid) is the current industry “darling”, but there are other less expensive solutions such as CROS hearing aids, or the TransEar, and even sophisticated regular hearing aids. You can read more about these various solutions in my article “Options for Single-Sided Deafness“. This will help you hear better from your deaf side, but it is not the total solution.

Second, make family, friends, classmates and teachers aware of your hearing loss and consequent problem with mispronouncing certain words. Ask them to tell you whenever they notice you are mispronouncing a word. Then have them show you how to pronounce it correctly. Repeat it back to them until you can do it properly.

Third, for words you come across when reading but have never heard pronounced, either ask someone who knows how to pronounce them correctly, or check the dictionary for pronunciations. Many dictionaries have pronunciation guides in them. You can also do this on-line. In fact, several on-line dictionaries actually pronounce the word so you can hear how it is supposed to sound.

Fourth, as necessary, use assistive listening devices such as an FM system to pipe the speaker’s voice right to your good ear. In practice, the person you want to hear (teacher, professor, boss, etc.) wears the FM microphone (wireless transmitter) and you wear the FM receiver. You plug an earbud into the earphone jack and place it in your good ear. A good FM system for this purpose is the Motiva.

When you do this, the sound is transmitted from the speaker’s mouth right to your good ear without any interference from background noise around you. As a result, you should hear beautiful, clear speech. Thus you will know exactly how words should sound.

When you have hearing problems (and single-sided hearing loss is a kind of hearing problem) noise and distance are your enemies. Therefore, anything that cuts down the background noise you hear, or effectively closes the distance between the speaker and your ears will help you understand speech better.

An FM system effectively closes the distance to about 6″ or so—the distance from the teacher’s mouth to the microphone. This fixes the “distance enemy”. At the same time, since the microphone is ever so much closer to the teacher’s mouth than the sources of noise in the room, you have effectively fixed the “noise enemy” too.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained:

I am deaf on my left side due to four acoustic neuroma surgeries. I now have a TransEar hearing aid but it doesn’t work like I expected. How about a CROS aid? Also, what else is new on the market?

There are a number of solutions for single-sided deafness.

1. If you have normal hearing on your good side, just be deaf on one side and practice good coping strategies to help overcome it such as sitting with your good ear “into the room” when in church, in meetings, etc. When chatting, have the person you are talking to either sit opposite you or sit on your good side—this kind of thing.

2. Get a bone-conduction hearing aid that was designed for single-sided deafness. There are three “kinds” out there of which I’m aware. All use the principle of bone conduction to transfer the sound from your deaf side to the good side.

A. Bone Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA). This involves having a titanium screw (post) drilled into your skull and the sound processor sits on this post. This is an invasive procedure and by far the most expensive.

C. TransEar. Which you already have. This is a BTE hearing aid that has a special transducer (vibrator) that vibrates a special ear mold that fits deep in your ear canal. Note: a new model is coming out shortly that might give you better results.

D. SoundBite. This is the “new kid on the block” and is still in trials. It vibrates your back molars to conduct the sound to your other ear. I wrote about the SoundBite here.

3. Get a CROS hearing aid. Cross aids are basically one hearing aid in two pieces. You wear the part that contains the microphone and transmitter on your bad side, and the part that contains the receiver and amplifier on your good side. It feeds the sounds from your deaf side to your good side. Because you wear a loose-fitting ear mold, you still hear all the sounds from your good side as well.

4. Get certain high-end regular hearing aids that “talk” to each other. You can set them such that any sounds picked up by the bad ear side are automatically transmitted to the good ear (crossover) so you can hear them.

CROS aids don’t seem to be very popular any more. Maybe because regular hearing aids that can do crossover (talk to each other) can do much the same thing.

I think the darling of the industry at the moment is the BAHA. It is worth investigating if you don’t mind the surgery and risks and expense involved.

However, you might also want to investigate the SoundBite. Perhaps it will be a good aid for you. Maybe you could get in the trials. Check out their web site.

Do your homework on all of the above, then talk to your audiologist about these various options and decide on what seems the best course of action for you.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

I have severe hearing loss and am looking for an assistive device that might help me in meetings and conferences, especially when I am the presenter. I’ve really cut back on doing these things because I can’t hear the speaker, or when I’m presenting—those in the audience who want to ask me a question.

I’ve seen your directional microphone and wonder about its effectiveness in these situations. Also, how does it transmit sound? I have hearing aids which have t-coils. Is the mic wireless? Do I need to use a neck loop and my PockeTalker? Thanks for any information you can give me.

I understand your situation well. I’m in the same boat—I have a severe hearing loss, can’t hear in meetings, nor hear the questions from the audience when I am the speaker.

The good news is that there are many things you can do to help yourself hear better in these situations.

1. You Are in the Audience

When you are in the audience and there is one main speaker, I’d use an FM system. Give the FM microphone/transmitter to the speaker. I usually ask him ahead of time and actually clip the lapel mic where I want it on him and tell him to put the transmitter on his belt or in a pocket. Then you will hear the speaker wonderfully well.

Alternately, you could tape the FM transmitter’s lapel mic to the lectern microphone (not to the lectern itself) and let the transmitter hang down in front of the lectern. Don’t put microphones and transmitters on the lectern itself. If you do this, you are being inconsiderate of the speaker’s needs. The speaker needs space for his papers and props, and lectern space is typically at a premium.

If you are sitting in the front row or two, and the speaker isn’t on a big platform (and thus quite a ways from you), use your PockeTalker and the super directional microphone. You have to be careful to aim this microphone at the speaker’s face. Because it is so directional, if you get sloppy in your aim, the sound quality and volume will rapidly drop off.

To use the directional microphone with your PockeTalker, you just plug it into the PockeTalker’s microphone jack, plug your neckloop in the earphone jack and turn on your t-coils if you are wearing your hearing aids. If you are not wearing hearing aids, or don’t have t-coils in your hearing aids, plug in a set of earbuds instead of the neckloop.

2. You Are the Speaker

When you are the speaker and you want to hear questions/comments from your audience, if the person is not too far from you, you can use your PockeTalker with the directional microphone plugged in and aim it at whomever is asking a question. I’ve found I really have to crank up the volume on the PockeTalker if the person is at any distance from me. The directional microphone works well for people within 20 feet or so of you.

Note: The PockeTalker’s microphone sensitivity is related to the volume setting. Thus, if you have the volume turned down, the microphone sensitivity is also down. As a result the microphone won’t pick up from as far away as it will when the volume is turned up.

In addition to amplification, there are many other techniques you can (and should) use when you are the speaker and can’t hear a person asking you a question. Here are some of the strategies I employ, depending on the situation.

• If there is real-time captioning, I just turn around and read the question off the screen. (If I am really lucky, the organizers will have placed a monitor on the lectern so I can read the questions directly from it.)

• I might walk down the aisle to get closer to the person. (This works well in smaller audiences and when you are not standing on a platform.)

• I might ask people to write their questions down and pass them up so I can read them. (This way I don’t have to strain to hear—I just have to strain to read people’s writing!)

• I might ask someone in the front row, whom I already know I can hear, to repeat any questions I can’t hear for me, or maybe just the key words I am missing.

• I might ask the person to come up to the lectern and talk face to face with me where I can hear and/or speechread him better.

• I might have a hearing person stand beside me during question period to repeat the questions so I can hear them.

• And of course, I am always speechreading people so often I can “get” the question even when I don’t hear much of it.

Notice I didn’t mention having a roving microphone and someone handing it to the person asking the question. The reason I don’t do this is because I find that I still can’t hear. (I seldom can even tell if the PA system is on or not, let alone hear and understand what a person is saying.) The rest of the audience may hear the question better with a roving microphone, but typically not me—unless there is a room loop system installed and the roving microphone is connected to it in some way. Then I can flip my t-coils on and hear quite well.

Another thing I could do, but haven’t done so to this point, is to use my FM microphone/transmitter as the roving microphone for people to speak into. That way, using the FM receiver and neckloop, I’d have their voices piped directly into my hearing aids. I should try this sometime when the conditions warrant it.

As you can see, there are ever so many things you can do in order to help yourself hear/understand the questions. If one thing doesn’t work for you, there are lots more things to try. You just need to be comfortable with your hearing loss so you are not embarrassed by it and thus are willing to do what you need to do in order to hear.

Here are links to the devices mentioned above. You can see the PockeTalker here, and the super directional microphone I use further down the same page and my favorite neckloop two pictures above the microphone.

The FM system I use is the older version of the Motiva FM System. Note: If you get this particular Motiva FM System, the receiver then doubles as a PockeTalker so you don’t need to purchase a separate PockeTalker.

P.S. This FM System and PockeTalker seem to last forever. Mine are about 10 years old and still going strong.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A man explained:

I am interested in finding information about face-to-face support groups for those of us who are hard of hearing. Do you have any insight on finding such a group? I have searched briefly on the web and called the local self-help center but have not found anything.

If there is not a group locally, I am thinking about starting one. I am thinking the purposes would include providing emotional support and providing education and resources for dealing with hearing loss. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Many hard of hearing people feel isolated and don’t know other people in the same boat as themselves. That is when they need a support group to help them. You are right on when you say they need emotional support, education and awareness of resources to help them.

It really makes things ever so much easier when dealing with your hearing loss if you can find help and support from other hard of hearing people who have been down the road before you.

Support can be of two kinds, either on-line (cyber) support or local (face to face) support.

On-line groups are available to you 24 hours a day via email, boards and chat rooms. Face-to-face support groups typically meet once a month for a couple of hours. Both kinds of support are important. Therefore, I encourage you to link up with both kinds of groups.

The best cyber support group of which I know is the SayWhatClub. I’ve been a long time member of the SayWhatClub. They excel in giving emotional support to help you deal with your hearing loss.

In addition to the “cyber people” that help you on-line, you also need to meet with local “skin people”, that is, people you can meet with face to face and touch. By far the largest face-to-face group in the USA is a local chapter of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) (formerly Self Help for Hard of Hearing People or SHHH). To find the closest chapter to you, click on your state. There you will find a listing of the chapters in your state, complete with contact information. You will be welcome at any of their meetings.

If there is no chapter near you, why not start one? That is what I did a number of years ago. HLAA will be delighted to help you get started. Contact Toni Barrient, the Director of Member Services and Chapter Development, and she will point you in the right direction.

In addition to local chapter meetings, HLAA also has an excellent annual convention with many workshops on various topics of interest to hard of hearing people. There you will meet hundreds and hundreds of other hard of hearing people just like yourself.

If you live in Canada, the organization you want to contact is the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association (CHHA). They have local chapters (called “branches”) scattered across Canada, and an annual convention (much like HLAA has).

To find the closest branch to you, select the province or territory in which you live, and you’ll see a list of the branches there.

If there is no branch near you, consider starting one. The people at the provincial chapter will be delighted to help you. Their contact information is listed first in the appropriate provincial listing.

I’m a member of both HLAA and CHHA and have spoken at numerous chapters/branches/conventions of both these organizations. You will feel right at home in them. I know I do.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

A lady explained:

I am a Social Service Director at a healthcare facility. I work with elderly people and continually run into the problem of resident’s losing their hearing aids. I was curious as to whether there are any devices or adaptations that are being sold to secure hearing aids to clothes or glasses.

You bet. Mostly, they are used to keep small children from taking out and losing their hearing aids, but they work well for adults too.

One such commercial product is Ear Gear.

Another commercial product is Safe-N-Sound.

There are also “Huggie Aids”, “Critter Clips” and “Kids Clips”.

This Listen Up website page has a bunch more useful ideas you might want to consider. Just scroll down to the section starting with the “green dot”.

Now you have a number of solutions to try. See which works the best for any given person.

by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.

Many hard of hearing people lack successful role models and mentors, so they buy into the hearing world’s belief that hard of hearing people can’t do many jobs, and are thus relegated to low paying menial jobs.

The truth is, hard of hearing people can do many, many jobs with proper accommodation. In actual fact, the sky’s the limit for hard of hearing people, just like it is for hearing people. What you can do depends more on your talents, skills, training, education, drive, ability to get along with people, etc. far more than it does on your level of hearing.

For example, there are hard of hearing doctors, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, lawyers, accountants, machinists, race car drivers, baseball players, businessmen, scientists, technicians and audiologists.

Therefore, don’t let the hearing world try to tell you that you can’t do any of these things. You need to follow your dream and do what you have set your heart on. That’s what I have done in my life. You can do it too.

Karen Putz (who now has a profound hearing loss) has put up a website of successful role models for deaf and hard of hearing people of all ages. The various stories highlight different successful hard of hearing and deaf people in the workforce. As you read them, you will be encouraged that since they have succeeded in the working world, you can follow your dreams too! You can read these inspiring stories here.