Intense Satisfaction

One of the areas of my life that brings me such satisfaction, I can even describe as intense, is doing speech therapy with kids. My professional "duties" are very minimal, which is part of the reason I enjoy it so much. I love putting a different hat on for a few hours each week. I love keeping up with the latest research and I really enjoy making connections, whether it is for a child learning to say a sound a different way or for a child beginning to understand the many abstract and subtle parts of language.

Right now I work in what is considered the "private practice" setting, which means I am not working in a hospital or a school. I work on my own, I bill insurance myself, and I (nervously) am accountable for failure or success.

I began working in the public school setting and had great mentors (can I say their names on here?  Cheryl, Bonnie among many, many others). I cherish my memories of working with the school team. What a valuable resource for a child - a whole team of professionals trying to connect the dots. I must have looked like a little girl playing school, but they all let me in and gave me the reins.

Let me back up here though, how did I ever choose this career? I wasn't aware of the "speech teacher" in my elementary, or even if we had one. So, when in college, my good friend Mary (daughter of our alma mater's superintendent) suggested I go into "Speech Pathology", I asked her, "What is that?"



One of four diplomas: one ever two years is a lot of commencing . . .



When I looked into it a bit more, the fit was absolutely perfect and I have never looked back or even had a second thought. I did general studies at my 2-yr school, with classes geared towards a communication disorders degree (biology, anatomy and physiology), then headed south to a school well-known for its high-quality program.







My undergraduate program was intense and very competetive. I loved the classes, even aural rehabilitation (audiology-geared class) :-). OK, so I didn't really love that one or speech science or the other audiology class, and I could've skipped clinical processes. Anyway, I mostly just loved that I was studying something I really wanted to do. I always felt like I was going to prove all of the "front-row-Joes" wrong by sitting in the mid-to-back part of the class and still get good grades. I guess my grades were good, but they weren't good enough to get into the master's program on campus (the front-row-Joes mostly did -- I am not bitter).

I am not in this picture, but had I been included, I would have been the one with the sweet "just-outta-the shower" hair, nibbling on a bagel



 





Anyway, I did get into a school further away (and got a rejection letter from a  far-away school the same day my fiance'-at-the-time got his acceptance letter to the same place). I also got into a program considered off-campus from my same university. I stayed put and haven't regretted it.



Long story short -- thank you Mary for giving me the idea, thank you to the audiology professor who had faith in me when I had run out, and thank you to those first guinea pig kids ("You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit").