Functioning around hearing people

On an individual basis, I'm able to hold a reasonable conversation with a hearing person where I use spoken English and read their lips -- providing they do not have an extreme accent, don't mumble, and they face me while they talk. The majority of the time, I'm barely functional about understanding new people but it's easier if we're talking about a predictable, everyday topic.

If they have an accent, absolutely not. Their accent is cause for anxiety and the increasing desire to leave the situation. Southern accents? Awful understanding. British accent? Pleasant to listen to, but they might as well be speaking gibberish. Indian accents? Forget about it! There's almost nothing more I hate than trying to talk to someone I cannot understand. It's embarrassing, it's frustrating, and it doesn't get anywhere productive. It's easier just to walk away. People tend to find it too awkward to write down what they're saying to a stranger, many have flat out refused and some shout out what they said. Why should they write anything down? It's not their problem if I can't understand them, but it becomes my problem in group situations at school.

The majority of GTAs in my Science classes at school have heavy accents. This means it's uncomfortable for me to ask questions one-on-one because the end result is common:  I pretend I heard them and I walk away.

I have disability accommodations at my schools but the person providing the captioning cannot get up with their equipment and follow me around the room. I'm not fluent enough in ASL to use interpreters. That leaves me with trying to force the GTA to walk up to me, never the reverse. That's simply not realistic. I dread the labs I have for classes. They should be fun, but I loathe them.

Group situations in labs are even worse when you're partnered with more than one person. Without fail, the other two people always end up babbling to themselves about the experiments and I cease to exist. I can't follow along, it's difficult to provide input or my own thoughts because the captioning I'm reading on my laptop screen is seconds behind. Seconds are crucial in response time for contributing to group work. If I had to guess, I would say I'm viewed as the slacker who doesn't contribute. I try, but all that happens is interrupting their conversations and getting snide looks.

As common as my behavior is to SmileNod/pretend to understand when people are talking. It's so ingrained in me that I no longer notice when I don't understand until someone asks a question that doesn't have a yes/no/sure answer. The SmileNod behavior combined with a yes/no question is how I ended up with my first boyfriend, which I'll talk about in the near future.