In my first solo episode, I share part of my own story-why I decided to pursue a career as a SLP. I share some of my early career aspirations, as well as some pivotal experiences during my undergraduate years that led me to major in Communication Sciences and Disorders.
S1E2. Why I Decided to Become a SLP (And Not a Wedding Planner!) – About, From, & With: An SLP Podcast
Episode Transcript
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a free tool called Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Welcome to the about from and with podcast, a podcast showcasing speech language pathologists journeys to finding their passion and purpose in the field. I’m your host, Dr. Danika Pfeiffer. In each episode we’ll learn about from and with SLP clinicians and researchers as they share their experiences, advice and expertise.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to my first solo podcast. On these solo podcasts, I’ll be sharing some information about my own personal journey, becoming a speech language pathologist and pursuing a PhD in the field, and hopes that these will be helpful to people that might be thinking about a similar path or just to learn a little bit more about me. So on this first episode I’m going to share about why I decided I wanted to be a speech language pathologist and what ultimately made me decide to go into the field. So to start off, I’m going to start with me growing up growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher, really, ever since the first grade, I loved my first grade teacher, so much so that I tried to be a teacher for my neighbors and my little sister, I would hold class in my bedroom and make worksheets for each of the different children that came over to my house. They each have their own folder. I remember coming up with lessons for them to teach them different academic skills. And I don’t know why they put up with it. But I just loved it so much. If I didn’t become a teacher, I also really had aspirations of becoming a writer of some kind. I loved to write all the time, I was constantly writing in my journal. And I used to write short stories, just for fun. And if neither of those things worked out, then I had heard about this professional storyteller job, which I thought would be really cool as well, where you could just travel the world and tell stories that you wrote or came up with. And I thought that was also really intriguing. So those were kind of the three things I was the most interested in. When I was younger, a teacher, an author, or writer of some kind, and maybe a professional storyteller. And I think it’s funny kind of looking back now on why I chose to go into academia. And I think it’s so funny that I will be able to and I’m already able to use all of these skills, teaching, writing, and storytelling through my research as a professor someday. So I think it’s really funny that those were the things that were initially interesting to me and still are today, as I was growing up. When I got into high school and started thinking about what career path I really wanted to take seriously, I had the opportunity to take an AP psych class. And in this course, I learned about psychology and became really interested in it. I joined the psychology club, and started doing some of my very first small experiments that we were learning about in class in the psychology club, and I was so nerdy and just loved it. So I was really intrigued about psychology and going into college, was thinking that was one potential route that I might want to go down was psychology. I also during high school was volunteering in a hospital at the time and had the opportunity to shadow an occupational therapist. And I was really interested in that as well. She was working with a child and I’d always loved kids. And I got to see her working one on one and thought that was really interesting and kind of wanted to learn more about that. So when I went into college, I kind of had these two things I was interested in, I knew I love to teach. Psychology was really interesting to me. And occupational therapy also looked really interesting, but I kind of felt like going into college that I hadn’t found the thing that was really my calling yet I hadn’t found that one thing that I was really excited about. And so I was hoping that when I got to college that I would be able to explore some different options, different careers and learn more about different things that I could do. Then during my first semester of college, I attended an information session for Communication Sciences and Disorders. There was an undergraduate program that was starting up and they were trying to grow. And the undergraduate program director held an information session one evening, and I decided to attend at my undergrad institution, the CSD department was in the School of Education. And I was spending a lot of time there because I was taking some education courses, since I have always loved to teach, and was taking some intro courses there. And so I had seen a flyer for this information session, I went to the session, and I met this undergraduate program director, and started talking to him and hearing about the wonderful work that speech language pathologists do, and just got really excited about it and had a conversation with the undergraduate program director. And he said, Well, if you think you’re interested in this, I really recommend that you go home over the winter break and tried to shadow a speech language pathologist. So that’s exactly what I did I, I looked in my area to see where some local speech language pathologists were, and reached out to a couple of them to shadow and heard back from one and went to shadow her. For a few days over my winter break, I went to a pediatric private practice to observe and she was actually becoming an Autism Center, so an autism specialty center in the state. And so I got to see really a variety of clients that she was working with throughout the day. And she really tried to engage me afterwards, we would kind of debrief about the sessions. And I really learned a lot about what a speech language pathologist does and what the everyday work could look like. And really just loved it and said, Okay, this is it, this is what I want to do. So I went back after winter break, and applied for the major in the spring and declared My major is communication sciences and disorders, and was really excited about it and met with my advisor, again, who became now my permanent advisor. And he had kind of charted out all the courses that I would need to take for my undergraduate degree in communication sciences and disorders. And I remember he created this color coded spreadsheet, it was, it was amazing, where it charted out each course I needed to take each semester. And he said, you know, you will actually be able to graduate in three years if you would like, because I had some credits that I had taken as dual enrollment when I was in high school. So that transferred over and got me out of a lot of my science courses. And I hadn’t really thought about graduating in three years. But I was kind of excited about that, because I had learned that you would need to get a master’s degree, if you wanted to become a speech language pathologist. And so I figured, okay, if I could do this in three years, and then two years of my graduate program, then that sounds like a good deal. So I decided that’s what I was going to do. But I did have an advisor that had been assigned to me as a first year student. And when I told her of this plan, she very much discouraged me from graduating in three years. I remember her telling me, you know, fourth year, your senior year is when you take that art history class that really changes your life and, and you learn all these things that you’ll never have a chance to learn again. And she made some really great points. But I had made up my mind at that point that I wanted to be a speech language pathologist. And this seemed like the best path for me. So as I got started in the major, I did think about initially, double majoring. And the only thing that still coming back to this love for teaching that I really thought that I might want to double major in was in education. And so I talked to my advisor about that. And I remember him saying, Okay, let’s see if we can work it out. And there was a problem, which was that the Education School there, you have to be part of a five year program. So you’d get your undergrad and Master’s in five years. And there wasn’t really another way for me to major in it unless I was going to do this five year master’s program. So I actually ended up setting up a meeting with my advisor and one of the deans from the Education School to see if there was some way that I could double major in education because I just really saw myself as still being so interested in education and what teachers do, even though I knew wanted to be a speech language pathologist, I always had this level of learning and an education. And I wanted to see if there was any way that we could work it out. So I remember being nervous going into this meeting, and sitting down with the dean and with my advisor and talking about, you know, my passion for teaching and learning and trying to see if there was some way that I could double major and CST in education. And the Dean was just actually very, they’re very worried about me, because they thought I was trying to take on too much. I was being too ambitious. She encouraged me to join some clubs on campus. And I had actually just recently joined a sorority on campus. And I had been accepted to be a Resident Advisor on on campus for the next school year. So I was very much involved on campus, and I was making friends. But they were worried that I was trying to take on too much. And they kind of discouraged me from trying to do this master’s program that I would have done. And so I ultimately decided that I was just going to graduate in three years with my one major in CSD, and not do the five year education, undergrad and master’s program. So that’s still always something that I think about maybe down the line pursuing another another Master’s in education, because I am really still very interested in how teachers approach teaching and the methodology behind it. And it’s still something that is is on my mind from time to time, but I am happy with my decision. I finished up my undergrad in three years, still took some classes in education, but they just weren’t towards a minor or major during the rest of my time. As an undergrad, I also was a research assistant for a professor in the education school that I had taken classes with. And I had an opportunity to do some transcribing for her of some focus groups, which was really interesting to me at the time. And right after that experience. I also had another research opportunity through my major through CSD to actually travel abroad, we had my undergraduate advisor, there was a group of us, I want to say, maybe around 12 of us that were able to participate in this wonderful experience, where we actually were able to conduct two different research projects that were related to speech and language. And we started the projects here in the United States before we left, and then we got to continue them in Belgium and Holland with two different researchers that work there. And so the first project that we did was a stuttering project where we were looking at non trained listeners perceptions of stuttering. And we actually got to use our friends, some of our very first research participants, which was fun and really exciting. And then the other project was visual scene display that we developed for a children’s book. And so we traveled over the summer for this study abroad program that spent three weeks in Belgium during the stuttering project and three weeks in Holland, working on the visual scene display. And this was just an amazing opportunity to dive right into research in our field, and really see it from start to finish. So we traveled, we conducted the research did some of the analyses with the researchers in Belgium and Holland. And then when we got back, we finished working on coding and analyzing the data, and actually got to write up one of the studies as a group with our undergraduate advisor. And so it was really an amazing opportunity to dive into the world of research, and really, really piqued my interest. I just loved it and was so excited about what we were doing, and how we were able to contribute new information to the field. So it definitely piqued my interest and made me start thinking about how I could continue to be involved in research going into a graduate program. So as I finished up my undergrad degree, I was applying to grad school for speech. And I applied to several different programs. I really don’t remember how many to be exact, but I think somewhere around six or so programs, I was mostly looking to stay in state because I was going to be Paying for my graduate degree. At the time that I was applying, I was actually doing an internship as a wedding planning assistant, I was working at a vineyard in the area outside of my university. And I would go to the vineyard,
to help with the day of events on the weekends. And so I would help them set up the weddings, and run the events as they were going on. And I just loved all the coordinating, that went into it all the planning that went into it, and just being part of these really happy celebrations on the weekends. And so that was kind of something that was ongoing as I was applying. And I really found that I enjoyed it a lot. And you know, I was getting nervous about applying to grad school, and I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get in anywhere. And I just said, Okay, if I don’t get into grad school, then I will be a wedding planner, because I loved it so much. So I kind of left it to fate to see what I was going to end up being either a wedding planner, if I did not get into grad school, or if I did get into grad school, I would become a speech language pathologist. And so I applied, submitted my applications, and then you know, the waiting is the hardest part. So I waited and waited, and was getting really nervous. I was really just hoping to get in anywhere. But I can’t, I had kind of picked one school in particular that I was really hoping to get into because I knew that they had an option to transition from a Master’s straight into a PhD. And because I had all this research experience and exposure, in my undergrad program, I was starting to think maybe a PhD could be for me. And so I was really interested in this one program in particular. But after, after waiting and waiting, I remember getting my very first letter of acceptance, and I was babysitting at the time. And I remember just reading that email on my phone and just crying because I was so happy and and I just remember that feeling of just not knowing you know, am I going to do it. And so I was, I was so happy, so relieved. And over the next few weeks, I received a few acceptances and and was very happy and very fortunate to have a few different options. And I did get into the one program that I was hoping to get into James Madison University that had that program with the option of transitioning from your masters into your PhD, I remember going on the accepted students day for that open house and being so excited. And at the end, you could stay a little bit longer and talk to the graduate program director one on one if you had any questions or just wanted to talk to her about anything, and I remember waiting in line, and I was actually the very last person so everyone had left. And I had kind of heard some conversations throughout standing there and waiting, where people were on the fence about whether or not this was the right program for them. And they were still really weighing their options. But I had decided that this was the program for me. And I was so excited about it. And I remember getting up and it was my turn and being able to talk to the graduate program director and her saying to her, you don’t have to convince me I already know this is the program for me. And this is where I want to be and just being so excited about it. That is how I decided to pursue this career as a speech language pathologist and really feel fortunate that I had so many great experiences leading up to being able to make that decision and had so many great mentors along the way. That is my story on how I originally got interested in the field of speech language pathology and ultimately decided to dive in and looking back. I’m so glad that I did. Thank you so much for listening to my first solo episode. I encourage you to follow the podcast so you’ll be notified of new episodes as they come out. Also, please consider taking a minute to leave a review so more people can find the podcast and listen to it. I’d really appreciate any feedback that you have. You can find the show notes and transcripts of the podcast at about from and with.com You can also follow me on Instagram at Danika Pfeiffer dot SLP. I hope to connect with you and hear your feedback soon. Until next time, stay humble and kind.
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