Senior year of college, I found myself in an Advanced Grammar class. Despite the horror some might feel at the idea, I had actually chosen this class. It was between Literary Criticism and Advanced Grammar, and I chose grammar.
I graduated from Grove City College, a small Christian school near Pittsburgh, PA in 2013. My undergrad was in English (no, not English Ed.), and I had little to no idea what I'd be doing with my life come May. Until Advanced Grammar. Where I discovered language development, Noam Chomsky, and phonetics. I quickly became fascinated and wanted to learn more about these things, but the videos we watched in class all had to do with research...and I did NOT want to do research. I wanted hands on. Working with kids. And learning lots of things I didn't know already about language.
I should also mention that my biggest decision in college up until this point was choosing between science (anatomy especially) and English (mostly for the language, and also literature). I have always loved both, despite how "weird" it was for me to be interested in them both. People who like science like math. And people who like Enlgish are more artsy. You can't like both.
That's what I had been hearing for most of my adolescent life, and I believed that everyone was right. Science and language don't really mix. They don't go together at all. Well, luckily Speech Pathology proved me--and everyone else--wrong.
As soon as I discovered that there was a career path that wouldn't make me choose between science and language, I knew I found the right place for me. So in the spring of my senior year (2013), I started a new journey. I learned that schools offered post-bacc programs to get students like me the undergraduate credits to get into grad school. And I also learned that the field was crazy competitive, due to limited seating in graduate programs. I had managed to come out of undergrad with no student loans, but this new path would definitely cost me. So I had my second huge decision to make: would I take the risk in a new field?
It was a hard choice. Lots of people thought I was crazy. I just got my Bachelor's degree, why would I want to do this to myself? Well, seeking council from people in the field already, I talked to three SLPs that spring. The first two were fully supportive of my crazy plan to enroll in a post-bacc program and get the pre-reqs I'd need for grad school. The last, a guy who was supposed to be an employment counselor, was just terrible. I can't remember how I found his information, but I emailed him, seeking some type of positive guidance or encouragement. Instead, I got a haughty and rude response, where he basically told me I was making a huge mistake and that I'd never get into a graduate program.
I'm sharing my back story here because I want to speak out to people looking for encouragement who come from a background like mine. An English major, from a small school, with an average undergrad GPA, who had to take pre-reqs from another school in order to get into graduate school.
You can do this. Despite what Negative Nancys might tell you, if you work hard and want to break into the field because you know it's what you're meant to do, you can definitely get into graduate school. I'm starting this blog in the hopes that my experiences will be an encouragement to students--whether you have the undergrad in Speech Path, or not--those looking for just a little reassurance that they are not crazy for trying to pursue such a competitive career. I'll be sharing sporadically, so stay tuned.
