Jack L. Chen has been blind since the tenth grade. But he doesn't want to talk about it.

He'd rather discuss God, guitar, the waffles in the Quincy House dining hall or Surface Washable, the name of both his Gund teddy bears (a friend suggested it after reading the instructions on their tags).

"Music, stuffed animals, AABS [Asian-American Bible Study] and food: that's what I am at Harvard," the sophomore says.

Chen is adamant about playing down his blindness. For him, it's just one more part of who he is, even if it's the part most people notice first.

"The image I like to portray is that there isn't much difference. Sure, there are little things here and there, but I'm just like everyone else in a lot of ways," he says.

Chen, a computer science concentrator, doesn't talk about his blindness much with friends. "Generally, the topic doesn't come up," he says. "I don't think people are uncomfortable--it's just not something that I find important, and other people don't either."

Yet it affects virtually every aspect of his life.

Just this month, Chen had to start the semester behind in his course work because Harvard's reading service required two weeks to record his textbooks onto audio tape. The Coop had stocked the books only one week before classes began.

When his classes offer lecture notes, Chen's teaching fellows send them to him via e-mail and his voice-synthesizer computer reads them aloud. He also uses his computer to take notes in class.

In the dining hall, he locates utensils by memory; someone must read him the list of entrees. He finds an empty seat by listening for pockets of silence amid the buzz of conversation.

Chen takes his exams separately, typing answers into a computer after someone reads the question.

Yet the sophomore maintains that he is not at all removed from the mainstream of classes. "I try to be independent," he says.

Fellowship

Chen has been interested in computers since fifth grade, when he first started writing programs. He is considering attending graduate school in computer science, but says he hasn't thought much about long-term plans.

"I don't think my strong point is academics," Chen says.