By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien
\nUniversity Relations and Marketing
\nIt\u2019s going to be a long weekend for Andrew and Paige Todd with three straight days of big events Friday, Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s a weekend they will cherish for a long time, especially by the time they get to Sunday.<\/p>\n
The young family will make the hour trip from Grainfield to Hays Friday evening for Andrew\u2019s graduation from Fort Hays State University, where he will receive his bachelor\u2019s degree in agricultural business.<\/p>\n
Early the next morning, they will be back in Hays for Paige\u2019s commencement ceremony at FHSU. She will walk across the stage at Gross Memorial Coliseum accepting her diploma for a bachelor\u2019s in English.<\/p>\n
Sunday, there probably won\u2019t be much time for resting at home as Paige celebrates her first Mother\u2019s Day. The Todds\u2019 son, Jeremiah, was born April 9.<\/p>\n
This might seem not all that out of the ordinary for a young married couple completing their college educations. But the Todds are not your ordinary young married couple.<\/p>\n
Paige will be doing all this celebrating with four of her five senses. Paige, who was born 15 weeks premature back in November of 1994, is legally blind. She can see some colors and shapes but says \u201ceverything is blurry.\u201d<\/p>\n
That hasn\u2019t stopped the Gove County woman from doing \u2013 well, just about anything she has wanted to.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Graduate from Wheatland\/Grinnell High School in Grainfield with honors. Check.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Earn an associate\u2019s degree from Colby Community College. Check.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Get married. Check.<\/p>\n
Four and a half weeks ago, Paige added giving birth to a healthy baby boy to that list of accomplishments. Saturday, it will be crossing that stage and accepting her diploma, a sign of earning her bachelor\u2019s degree.<\/p>\n
For three semesters, Paige lived in Wooster Place apartments and navigated the FHSU campus. Sometimes friends helped her find her way, but most of the time Paige could be seen walking alone with her best friend \u2013 a white walking stick. Paige then completed her degree online from home during the final stages of her pregnancy.<\/p>\n
Andrew also completed his bachelor\u2019s through FHSU\u2019s Virtual College after receiving his associate\u2019s from Colby Community College. After serving four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Andrew is back home in Gove County, where he farms and ranches with Paige\u2019s dad, Leon Tuttle, and also works part-time as a rural mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.<\/p>\n
Knowing she would have other responsibilities once her baby arrived, Paige decided to be as active as possible on campus. She took a couple of defensive tactics classes and landed a writing internship. She did editing work for the nursing department and financial aid office.<\/p>\n
With her college days behind her, Paige can now concentrate on raising the couple’s son \u2013 and continuing her part-time job as a proofreader for the Scott County Record.<\/p>\n
Rob Haxton, owner and publisher of the Record, emails Paige stories. Using software specifically for sight impaired, Paige listens to the stories being read aloud, right down to punctuation marks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI joke with my staff that we have three sets of eyes to look over everything and she does this without any sight,\u201d Haxton said. \u201cPaige is a very, very good proofreader, a hard worker and very conscientious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paige could write a book on how she improvises in finding ways to accomplish things that sighted people take for granted.<\/p>\n
She just might do that, if she has a mind to. She got some good experience in that type of writing this semester in an independent class on blogging under Dr. Cheryl Duffy, professor of English.<\/p>\n
Paige\u2019s blogs include the joy of finding apps on an iPhone that a flip phone didn\u2019t offer. However, switching from a flip phone with buttons she could feel to a touch screen posed other issues.<\/p>\n
Much like she has done her entire life, Paige figured out a way to solve that problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything that she sets her mind to do she is going to do, and she\u2019s going to do it well,\u201d said Duffy, Paige\u2019s advisor who had her in several classes. \u201cShe\u2019s good about advocating for herself. She\u2019s going to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Paige\u2019s blogs is on the \u201cperks of being visually impaired,\u201d focusing on the positive rather than the negative.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere definitely are things I can\u2019t do,\u201d she wrote, \u201cor things that could be done better by others. But in this post, I will focus on a few positive things about being legally blind.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that blog, Paige points out special skills different than a lot of people possess, such as being literate in Braille and the lack of appearance-based impressions of people. Others are ones some people might take for granted, such as the ability to pay attention to detail and unique conversations.<\/p>\n
Paige even jokes that “another perk of being legally blind is that no one has ever asked me to drive during a road trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another blog is entitled \u201cHow I organized my nursery as a first-time blind mom.\u201d She talks about organizing clothing by age, diapers by size and bathing supplies by type. She describes the placement of items, right down to where she has placed the Braille books that she can read to their baby, along with printed books that Dad can read to Jeremiah.<\/p>\n
Maybe one day they can read Jeremiah a book his mother wrote.<\/p>\n
That wouldn\u2019t surprise Paige\u2019s parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe always told both our girls they could do anything they wanted to,\u201d said Paige\u2019s mom, Donna Tuttle. \u201cIt was kind of expected to go to college and get a degree. But it was their decision. Paige has always had high expectations for herself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those expectations have taken on a new meaning for Paige with her responsibilities as a new mother. But raising Jeremiah will be all in a day\u2019s work for Paige.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some things that I probably do slower because I can\u2019t see what I\u2019m doing,\u201d she said. \u201cMy husband changes diapers a lot quicker than I do. But I get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
For anyone attending Saturday\u2019s graduation, watch for Paige walking across the stage Saturday. She will be the barely 5-foot tall woman marching proudly with a white walking stick, head held high. Afterward in the crowd, she will be holding a month-old baby.<\/p>\n
Congratulations, Paige Todd, and Happy Mother\u2019s Day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Diane Gasper-O\u2019Brien University Relations and Marketing It\u2019s going to be a long weekend for Andrew and Paige Todd with three straight days of big… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11722],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38285,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38284\/revisions\/38285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}