{"id":4786,"date":"2013-02-20T11:42:57","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/?p=4786"},"modified":"2013-02-20T11:43:18","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T16:43:18","slug":"navigating-morningside-justin-dixson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/archives\/4786","title":{"rendered":"Navigating Morningside: Justin Dixson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Justin\"<\/a>By Paige Potter–<\/strong>College guys enjoy a variety of things, including: sitting in front of their televisions playing X-box, hanging out with their friends, eating, watching or playing sports, and flirting with pretty girls.<\/p>\n

Justin Dixson, a \u201csuper senior\u201d music major at Morningside College, enjoys many of these activities. He also enjoys singing old country songs and participating in his music fraternity Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. He is 5\u201910\u201d with brown curly hair, which is starting to grow thin in spots. When he walks, he tends to drag his feet. You can hear him coming before he even reaches you.<\/p>\n

Even though Justin seems like any other guy on a college campus a few things set him apart. One is his green and white cane, which helps guide him to his destination.\u00a0Justin lost vision when he was just a baby. He is still able to see shadows such as people right in front of him, movement, or to tell if it\u2019s sunny or cloudy out.<\/p>\n

Dixson was born three and a half months early, weighing only a pound a half. The doctors told his parents he only had a five percent survival chance. He was moved to a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where each day he became a healthier, stronger baby. Through the next three months everything developed properly except his vision. His optic nerve was damaged in his eyes and both retinas were detached.<\/p>\n

At the age of three, he had surgery to try and fix the optic nerve, but something went wrong in the surgery. No one is entirely sure what caused it; doctors have narrowed it down to two things. During the surgery, there was either too much or too little oxygen to his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m lucky being blind is the only thing wrong with me,\u201d Justin said.<\/p>\n

Learning independently<\/strong>
\nDixson has overcome many obstacles so far in his 22 years. He has learned tasks such as eating, reading braille, living independently, schoolwork, and other everyday activities.<\/p>\n

Although Justin does go places on his own he says it\u2019s easier to go places with others. He does many things by himself and he gives credit to the visually impaired schools he attended in the past.<\/p>\n

One place he will not go by himself, though, is the cafeteria on campus. He says if he has no one to go with, he will stay in his room and eat the food he has there.<\/p>\n

Someone who accompanies Justin and helps him in the cafeteria is Andrew Poeckes, better known as just Poeckes to most. Poeckes serves as Justin\u2019s eyes. He describes the food choices; gets Justin\u2019s food, drink and silverware; and brings his food to him. After Justin is all settled, Poeckes then gets his own food. If Justin wants a refill or more food Poeckes gets it for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely has its advantages to learn to think about someone else next to you so you aren\u2019t just off in your own little space,\u201d Poeckes said.<\/p>\n

Poeckes has to pay special attention when he\u2019s walking with Justin. He described how it feels to be someone else\u2019s eyes. \u201cWhen we were in Italy I had to keep looking at the ground to make sure I wasn\u2019t running him into things. Always\u00a0having to pay attention to where you\u2019re going.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sounds of Morningside<\/strong>
\nPeople with their vision often wonder how people who are visually impaired get around by themselves. For Justin, it deals with memorization. For the first few trips to a new building, he asks hall mates to accompany him to his classes. Once he has paths memorized, it becomes easier.<\/p>\n

The way Justin memorizes his way to classes is by doors. One of the noisiest doors on campus, he explained, is the first side door walking to the MacCollin classroom\/Eppley Auditorium building.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat door is squeaky. When I leave my room, I go outside Roadman South\u2019s door and if the wind is blowing the right way I can hear the door and say to myself, \u2018Oh there\u2019s Eppley,\u2019\u201d Dixson said.<\/p>\n

Since Dixson has been here five years, he\u2019s pretty much got all the paths to different buildings memorized. Memorizing anything for someone with their vision and someone without is very different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll have someone lead me there. I don\u2019t count my steps. I just have someone point out which building is which for the first few times. Someone will say, \u2018Okay, we\u2019re going to the science center\u2019 and I\u2019ll hear a sound of the building and memorize that sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perfect pitch<\/strong>
\nAfter Justin graduates from Morningside, he plans to visit Washington to visit a piano tuning school.\u00a0 One of Justin\u2019s dream jobs is to tune pianos for a living. One of the criteria the school recommends for this activity is perfect pitch.\u00a0 As uncommon (occurring in only one in every 10,000 people) as perfect pitch is, Justin has it. When a human is missing one sense such as their sight, it only makes sense for something such as perfect pitch to replace it.<\/p>\n

Justin has been in the Morningside College Choir since his second semester. Byron Brown, who has been in choir with Justin for two years, said, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty much normal as any other choir except we don\u2019t have to have a piano. If he gives us the right starting pitch we usually keep it afloat. It is cool sometimes to see the audiences\u2019 reactions when they realize someone in the choir was the one to give the starting note and not piano. In particular, it helps us when we travel.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to worry about a piano.\u00a0 Not many people have the ability to hum every note in tune so it\u2019s cool to have someone in our choir like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paige Potter–College guys enjoy a variety of things, including: sitting in front of their televisions playing X-box, hanging out with their friends, eating, watching or playing sports, and flirting with pretty girls. Justin Dixson, a \u201csuper senior\u201d music major at Morningside College, enjoys many of these activities. He also enjoys singing old country songs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":4787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morningside-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4786"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4789,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions\/4789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/thecr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}