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SALT LAKE CITY — Meeting the challenges of graduate school, no matter which program, can be daunting.
Among the second-year students at the University of Utah is Darran Zenger. His dream is to become a social worker, which involves a demanding list of classes and practicums and training in different areas — learning people skills and understanding government aid.
Darran and his guide dog, Archer, maneuver campus and the social work program with determination. Darran has Usher syndrome: born deaf, he wears cochlear implants. And his sight continues to deteriorate with retinitis pigmentosa. He believes he knows exactly how to help others with disabilities.
"My experience growing up, it was normalized,” he said. “You lose vision, you lose hearing, so what? It's just a challenge, that's all it is."
Holding his arms outstretched, he slowly brings them in to demonstrate his sight range.
In Darran's presentation to fellow students earlier this semester, titled "Seeing through Blindness," he described one of his pet peeves: people who say, "You don't look blind."
“I mean, not to be rude or anything, but you don’t look stupid,” Darran said.
His classmates laugh. He understands who needs him.
Twenty million people suffer from total blindness in the United States, the narrator in Darran’s presentation video says.
“Losing vision is a very traumatic experience for many people,” Darran explained.
When people become legally blind, he says, it affects their family relationships, their social life and their employment.
“For blind or visually impaired individuals, the unemployment rate, just in that population, is 70 to 75 percent,” Darran said.
Darran's fellow classmates see him as not only a regular member of the group, but also, because of his disabilities, a little more caring than most.
(Darran's) looking out for his individual peers.
–Callie Tatum
Callie Tatum took notes for Darran their first year in grad school. She says he was always more concerned about her.
"He's looking out for his individual peers,” Tatum said. “That's kind of a humbling, eye-opening moment to experience."
Mary Beth Fitzpatrick says Darran never defines himself by his disabilities.
"He talks it and he walks it so that 98 percent of the time I'm really not aware that there's anything crazier about him than the rest of us who are doing social work, you know?" Fitzpatrick said.
His professors say he speaks volumes just being who he is.
"Just the fact that there is a Darran, that will speak to the people he works with whether they're children or teens or grown-ups," professor David Derezotes said.
Darran will receive his degree this spring and then hopes to deliver a message of possibilities.
"We can't change the world overnight but we can change the world one person at a time,” he said.
He carries that message of hope to families and individuals who need to hear from him.
