Her hands press firmly on the clump of glistening clay. Her dark thick hair sways subtly as she leans over the wheel. The clay submits to the pressure of her hands and the wobbling stops. She's ready to go farther. She places her thumbs into the center of the soft clay, grasps a side between her forefinger and thumb, and lifts up. Rachel Magario, Sau Paulo, Brazil graduate student, goes to the ceramics studio at least twice a week as a part of her master's program in design. Rachel Magario is blind.
She lost her sight as a 6-year-old when her family's car was hit in a rear-end accident. The doctors checked her out and said she was fine, but they missed something--something big. Her retinas were slowly detaching from the backs of her eyes.
"I guess when you're six you don't really know how to describe that you're vision is getting fuzzy," Magario said.
Then one day it was gone. Magario said she didn't understand the blindness. She didn't understand why everyone made a big deal about it. She remembers thinking that maybe everyone went blind, that it was just a part of life. But that's about all she remembers.
"Psychologically I chunked that whole year out of my life. Sometimes I get flashes, but that's it. A change is a change, you just have to deal with them as they come."
And that's just what she did. Magario, now 32, came to the University for her undergraduate degree when she was 19 on a scholarship from the Institute of International Education.
Magario's freshman year started well. On Oct. 12, 1997, she celebrated her 20th birthday in Lawrence, and met someone. Sergio Guerra, now a Ph.D candidate in environmental engineering, wasn't supposed to be at her birthday party. A friend asked him for a ride. Guerra drove his friend to Dillon's to pick up flowers for the birthday girl, and then drove with him to McCollum. There, he met his future wife.
"Rachel's smile is something that I always admired on her," Guerra said.
But Magario's freshman year ended differently than it began. While crossing the street between Strong Hall and Wescoe, a car struck her. Despite suffering injuries that would plague her for years to come, Magario said campus police didn't do much to help her, and no charges were brought against the girl who hit her.
"It was my first year here and my English was really bad," Magario said. "It's okay, I don't hold any grudges, I don't blame her."
She knew something was wrong with her kidneys after the accident. But for two years she refused dialysis treatment, until one day the problem could no longer be ignored.
She couldn't sleep that night. She woke up in a sweat and took a cold shower. She was delirious. She passed in and out of consciousness, dreaming of fire, smoke, and walls collapsing in on her. On the morning of Sept 11, 2001, her kidney failed. Even when recalling that day, she's able to maintain a smile. She jokes that the day the towers went down, she went down with them.
Magario struggled to keep up. She endured dialysis treatments and a constant seesaw of being in and out of the hospital, all while staying in school.
"I was on a student visa, so I had to maintain a 12 hour schedule to stay in the country," Magario said. "If I had left my scholarship, I would have lost it. I would have lost everything I fought for."
With her kidney condition weighing her down, she finished some classes with incomplete grades. Work for any incomplete classes carried over into her next 12-hour semester. She was always playing catch up.
"I just tried to keep my head above water," Magario said.
It took her seven years, but in 2004 she finished undergraduate school. In December she graduated with a degree in communication studies, and in May she finished her geography degree.
In addition to the extreme workload of seven years of undergraduate work, Magario fought another battle. Because she was not a U.S. citizen, Magario struggled for years to get her name on a kidney transplant list. Once she was put on the list in 2004, her citizenship got in the way once more and she wasn't allowed to be placed on a priority list. But her health was fading-- fast. She needed to go home. Back in Brazil, she was immediately put on priority status. On Dec. 26, 2005, after just 17 days of waiting in Brazil, she got her kidney.
During her recovery for the next year, she maintained a meager schedule in graduate school, between 3-6 hours a semester. She took technical education classes at the start of graduate school, and decided that was the field she was most interested in. When she went to talk to Richard Branham, Interaction Design professor, to see if there was a graduate program available for technical education, he suggested a different program that surprised her.
"When he suggested that I do design, I thought, 'Are you kidding? Can I do that? Me, in design?'" Magario said.
But Branham thought she was perfect for it.
"The fact that she can't see doesn't make a difference in design. She brings a unique perspective to the design world," Branham said.
Magario enrolled for the Spring 2008 semester in the school of design. This fall, Branham headed a new program called the Interaction Design Program. The program has about 20 students in its first semester, and according to Branham, it is one of the first of its kind in the country. Its aim is to design products with accessibility for people like Rachel in mind.
"Designing products for blind people even makes them easier to use for sighted people, too," Branham said.
Branham said that Rachel is one of the first people to take the design program and combine it with a graduate study program in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the business school, although this joint program is not yet fully approved by the University.
"She's one of the most proactive students I've ever had," Branham said.
But compliments aren't enough for Magario. She said she doesn't want her blindness to play a role in why people admire her or her work. Guerra said that he thinks people should not look at his wife as a blind person, but rather as a person who just so happens to be blind.
"It bothers me that people think I'm great because no body pushes me to be better," Magario said.
So she pushes herself. In addition to working on two graduate degrees, she is president of Able Hawks and co-president of the Net Impact group on campus, a group for graduate business students.
"Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew," Magario said, a smile spreading across her rounded cheeks. "I'm a great think-tank. I'm the kind of person who wants to get thing done yesterday."
Business Ethics professor Douglas May had only had her in class three times before Oct. 30, but said she is a true pleasure to have in class.
"In a short time, she leaves a big impression, and demonstrates her passion for learning," May said.
It was her passion for learning that first drew her in to the world of pottery. When she was 2 years old living in Brazil, one of her neighbors was an international potter who had a ceramics studio right in her house.
"I was always hanging out there," Magario said. "I don't remember what I did, but I must have learned something."
Her early fascination turned out to be just what she needed after her kidney transplant.
"After my transplant I needed something I could do on my own. I needed something I could create on my own," Magario said.
When Magario needs help learning a new technique for throwing pottery, she'll ask her professor of or other classmates if she can see what they're doing. She places her hands over theirs as they throw a pot, feeling the pressure of fingers and discovering a new way of working.
"I grab them all crazy," Magario said with a heart-felt laugh. "They all help me out a lot."
It's been more than a decade since Magario's accident on campus. Though she's still not a U.S. citizen and life in Lawrence has been anything but easy, it's here where she feels most comfortable. It's here where she is most herself.
"Now when I go abroad, it's Lawrence I'm homesick for, not Brazil. Here is where I've had my worst times, but Lawrence is my home."
Leave a comment