Ah, yes, communication sciences and disorders, the most confusing major to anyone that doesn't know about it...and to those who do. If you've ever wondered what our lives are like, look no further.
1. Free time is basically non-existent.
Free time is basically a foreign concept. Don't even complain to us if you've been busy for a couple of hours, because we've probably been busy all week and are running on minimal sleep.
2. What you call "went down the wrong pipe" we call "aspirated."
It's a lot shorter and more technical to say, anyways. To top this off, when this situation occurs, you say "Cough it out," while we think "They need to flip their epiglottis."
3. "Huh? What's your major?"
Let me clarify this for those confused. A communication sciences and disorders major studies the science behind communication problems and how they develop. We also learn how to treat said problems in adults and children and use what we learn to better develop our strategies for diagnosis and treatment. In the future you can just call us speech-language-hearing-resonance-voice-swallowing-fluency-pragmatics-cognitive-communications-modalities pathologists if that makes it easier.
4. When you study for phonetics, it's just you making weird noises at yourself and other people judging.
I'm frequently caught red handed saying /i/, /e/ and many other phonemes aloud, and doing it multiple times to check where I placed my tongue. To anyone that has witnessed this, sorry, not sorry.
5. We have a weird sense of humor.
Example A:
Example B:
And, example C:
6. They're not letters, they're phonemes.
Call them letters to a phonetics teacher, I dare you.
7. I barely remember my friend's and family's birthdays, but I know the anatomy and physiology of human communication pretty well.
I'm sorry guys, I still love you; I hope you can forgive me!
8. We're pretty good at reading phonetic transcriptions.
Can you read this without cheating? Because I certainly can, just as if it were plain old English.
(It's a speech thing.)
9. We've all had emotional breakdowns from the pure stress of it.
And these emotional breakdowns lead us to feel like this:
10. It's such an amazing major.
Yeah, it's a pretty challenging major, and the careers it leads to are no easy tasks. A career with this major challenges you to use your intellect in combination with your humanity to do meaningful work that will forever be rewarding. That is why I love my major and all that it is.
