I always knew that I wanted a profession where I would be communicating with people and helping people grow or achieve goals to some extent. I also always knew I wanted to work with kids at least partially. A journey of trying out different things and narrowing my passions has brought me to the goal of being a speech-language pathologist, something I am now extremely passionate about and am excited to share about.
When I was a senior in high school, I assisted a kindergarten class every day for an hour. I loved spending time with the kids. Through this experience, I thought that I might want to be a teacher because I enjoyed it so much every day. However, I noticed an inclination that I had when working with the kids. Something in me wanted to spend one-on-one time with them and really help them understand and progress in things they were working on. For example, some of the kids were learning to spell their names, and there was one little boy who was a little bit behind and could not get his letters right.
The teacher worked with him as much as she could but there were ten kids in the class so her attention and time were very divided. I wanted so badly to sit with this boy and help him and give him the time and attention that he needed to progress in this way. Throughout this experience, I eventually learned that I wanted to work one-on-one with kids rather than being a teacher and give them a special time to progress in any things that they were behind it. I loved the idea of giving a kid a chance when people might put him down or overlook him, causing the learning delay to get even worse.
That experience in the kindergarten class helped narrow my passion from teaching kids to working individually with kids in some way. So I began to look into professions like physical therapy, occupational therapy, and finally found speech-language pathology. A speech-language pathologist is a professional who works with people who have speech and language disorders, which is a huge range of specifics. From communication disorders to lisps, to stroke victims, to special needs, speech and language disorders involve a big range of conditions and people.
I loved that fact that I would be able to work with different specifics but still in the same realm. I quickly fell in love with the idea the more I researched it. I realized how critical speech and language is and how many things it affects throughout one's life. How if I was able to help a child progress in this, I could potentially help them in so many areas such as social skills, school, work field, college acceptance, relationships and marriage, so many things. Speech leads to so many things in our life and it is so crucial.
After finding this field and growing a passion for it so quickly, I switched my major to communication sciences and disorders and have been in this major ever since. To work requires a master and I would personally love to eventually get a Ph.D. The concepts involved in studying it are so complicated and so diverse, but I hold tightly to the hope and goal of changing lives one day one voice at a time. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have found a profession I am passionate about and I encourage you that if you haven't yet, keep searching until you do the same.
