Bio

My name is Rachel Hamilton. I am seeking an AA degree from Miami Dade College in ESC Education. Once this goal is accomplished, I will transfer to Florida State University and secure my BS degree in the field of Visual Disabilities. My ultimate goal is to become an Itinerant Teacher. Itinerant teacher is also called a teacher for the visual impaired (TVI). Being a TVI would mean being able to show by example to another blind/visual impaired person that they can obtain an education and set and accomplish goals like everyone else. I believe that I can help them to see that they are valuable and can be productive citizens. I was born in Jamaica and my family migrated to the United States when I was a very young girl. I am now forty-two and perhaps more american than jamaican in a lot of ways. I began my quest for a college degree way back in 1986 when I graduated from Miami Norland Senior High. I obviously did not accomplish my goal at that time since I am still here. What can I say - life happened and I decided to follow another path. I instead found a job in the mortgage profession and found out that I was rather "gifted" in this line of work and stayed in that profession for the next eighteen years. I started out in the mortgage business as a data entry clerk and I ended that line of work as a post closing operations manager/secondary marketing. This career path can to an abrupt halt when I began to experience vision difficulties due to my diabetes. I was diagnosed with diabetic traction retinopathy. I had to make major adjustments and changes in order to manage my life and still be a productivehuman being. I enrolled in an indepenpent living program at the Miami Lighthouse For The Blind and learned how to do things in a different way. New skills allotted me with new hope and new vision for the future. Instead life ending, a new chapter was beginning and I was ready to embrace it. This is what I would like to bring to every blind or visually impaired student – hope and the realization that life still is worth living and that they can obtain a degree, have a career, full social lives, families and can contribute service and time to helping others and good causes. I want to encourage, give real skills and techniques, open minds, give new vision and provide hope and inspiration for dreaming big.