STEPHENVILLE, Texas — Life has been challenging for Sara Rodriguez from day one.

“I stopped breathing in my mother’s stomach, so I lost all the nutrients and they had to pull me out so I was prematurely born three months early,” said the biomedical science pre-med student at Tartleton University.

As a premature baby, she was in the NICU and it was during that time that she was diagnosed with hearing loss, which became worse by the time she reached high school.

“Now I have a cochlear implant in my right ear and a hearing aid in my left ear,” Rodriguez said.

Her hearing loss was not easy to accept at first, but she now views it as a gift.

“It’s a struggle, it’s something that you’re, like, I don’t want to have this, I don’t know what it is. Yes, that is something I had to take time to figure out. It took years for me to figure it out,” she said.

Rodriguez wants to share her experiences and knowledge about deaf culture to create a more inclusive community for those who face a similar situation.

“This is where I need to be at and ever since I made a point to advocate for the deaf as much as possible because there aren’t that many of us here. It’s easy for people to forget that deaf people are there,” she added.

Rodriguez founded an American Sign Language Club at Tartleton where the sophomore is providing a space where all students requiring accommodations feel welcome and are joined by those wanting to support them.

“Before I met [Rodriguez] I didn’t know much about the hearing loss community, I thought you could either hear or could not, but turns out there’s a spectrum of it,” said Rodriguez’s sorority sister Hannah Wilson.

The initiative is already creating changes on campus to accommodate student members.

“We also ordered a clear mask for everyone in our chapter,” said Wilson.

In her two years at Tartleton, the pre-med student has found her calling and reached important milestones which she wants to build on.

“That includes anywhere I go – wherever I end up, even if that’s in a hospital setting if they’re not getting the resources they need,” said Rodriguez.

She wants to continue improving things for those coming after her.

“If you meet a deaf person talk to them and learn their language and everything you can about them, because [in] all honestly they just want to belong,” she said.