She was in a year 9 science lesson and looking at her textbook when her teacher asked her a question: had she done the homework that was assigned last class?

“Because it wasn’t written up on the board I didn’t do it. I didn’t know that I was supposed to have homework,” Ms Clarke told news.com.au.

Growing up in a small country town in Western Australia, Ms Clarke, now 38, never knew anyone who was deaf.

In fact it wasn’t until a school nurse flagged soon after the science class incident that Ms Clarke’s hearing might be an issue that doctors began investigating.

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“I thought that what I was going through at the time, I thought that it was the same for everybody,” Ms Clarke, who appears on tonight’s episode of Insight, said.

“I thought they had the same level of hearing, which was practically nothing.”

But getting a diagnosis wasn’t simple, with doctors instead suggesting Ms Clarke was making up her hearing problems for attention.

“He asked my mum if there was a possibility I’d been abused, because that’s why I was so off to the side, I wouldn’t answer questions,” she said.

Ms Clarke and her mother now believe her hearing was impacted by a bout of illness she had at age eight.

“Mum used to tell me that my speech was fine, everything was fine (before I got sick),” Ms Clarke said.

“It wasn’t just a sudden thing where I lost my hearing, it was a really gradual loss.”

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Eventually, Ms Clarke was fitted with a hearing aid at 14 – which she said was life-changing – and at 17, she moved to Perth where she was able to connect with other deaf teenagers.

“I had friends telling me, ‘Oh you can put captions on your TV,’” she said.

“Then I was asking, ‘How did you go when you were in class at school, how did you cope with that?’ And then one of my girlfriends said to me, ‘Oh I had a note taker,’ and I was thinking, ‘What you had a note taker and I had nothing.’”

While Ms Clarke was able to form connections with people her age who were deaf, she still faced difficulty at work or in social settings.

Dating was worse, with Ms Clarke dreading the idea of talking to someone on the phone.

“I had boyfriends over time, but it was hard,” she said.

“One of the major things was talking on the phone was really hard, part of my role prior to getting the cochlear implant was in customer service so I had to take phone calls and it was hard to pick up the phone and talk to people when you can’t hear.”

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At 26, Ms Clarke made the decision to get a cochlear implant, a decision she says has improved both her career and personal life.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “Life has changed 100 per cent, it’s just flipped. It’s so much better.”

Ms Clarke is single but “definitely more confident” when it comes to dating and doesn’t get as nervous meeting new people.

“If I’m going to be single I have to find peace with that and I’ve found peace with that,” she said.

“It is lonely at times … I’ll keep trying to date.”

While she is happy, Ms Clarke believes her life would have turned out differently had she not been deaf.

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“If I could turn back the clock and be hearing? Yes, I would,” she said.

“It would make my life so much easier, because I come from a hearing family and I would have all those opportunities that I missed out on.

Ms Clarke hopes that by sharing her story, people who don’t struggle with their hearing can be more empathetic to those who are deaf.

“Deaf people are not stupid, just because you’re deaf doesn’t mean you don’t know things,” she said.

“I think that the hearing community just need to be aware that if someone can’t hear you, don’t brush them off.”

You can hear more from Rhianna and others on The Deaf Divide on SBS Insight at 8.30pm on Tuesday.