Top left: Langa Tienda by Kerry Obrist (Photograph of a convenience store in Langa Township, South Africa). Top right: Ode to the L.S.S. by Kerry Obrist (Photograph of a lighthouse off Navy Pier). On the right-hand page: Kerry Obrist in her Chicago apartment.
ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE K
Kerry Obrist (BS ’91, MEd ’96), who is legally blind, works on behalf of others with disabilities. By ANASTASIA BUSIEK
erry Obrist (BS ’91, MEd ’96) was working as a school psychologist in Chicago’s south suburbs when she realized she was losing her vision faster than expected. Recognizing that some activities were going to become more difficult for her, Obrist decided to challenge herself.
“I specifically did things that were outside my comfort zone. I wanted to ex-
perience things that I thought I might not be able to do later on,” Obrist says. She traveled to South Africa, Egypt, and Turkey. She participated in a 500-mile bike ride. She took up photography. She learned how to rock climb. She went downhill skiing. “Which I probably shouldn’t have done,” she notes. Obrist was diagnosed with a genetic vision loss condition at age 23, and
by age 30, the loss was disabling. In 1998, when she became legally blind, she had to stop driving. She became unable to recognize faces. While Obrist’s vision loss made many things tougher, she says it changed her for the better in unexpected ways. “I know I became much more interesting as a visually impaired person,” she
says. “I think I was maybe fun beforehand. But I became much more gregari- ous. In a store, I have to ask someone if clothes match. I have to be more open to asking for help and being willing to admit I can’t do everything.”
16 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO Obrist went through rehabilitation, learning how to navigate the everyday
by relying more heavily on her other senses, such as putting a key in a lock by mechanical memory, instead of by lining up what she saw with her eyes. “It’s not like other forms of rehab—you’re not getting the vision back,” Ob-
rist says. “It was just learning to use your mind in a different way. I’ve become a much better problem-solver. I have to be creative.” Despite finding new ways of doing things and making resourceful adjust-
ments, the vision loss made it challenging for Obrist to continue working as a school psychologist. Doing classroom observations of students from a dis- tance and working with printed materials became impossible, and so Obrist left her position. “It was frustrating, because I saw what I had been doing in a different light.
I thought I was an effective school psychologist before, but I know I would have been even more so with the disability,” Obrist says. She volunteered with various organizations and went on interviews,
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