I always loved science and English in school. People thought it was weird because those two subjects apparently don't mix well. So when it came to picking a major as I applied for undergrad programs, I decided to start out with Biology, and if I didn't like it, it'd be easier to switch to English than the other way around later on.
My first semester at Grove City College in the Fall of 2009 revealed that I just wasn't cut out for Bio. Too much about cells and stuff that I just didn't care about. Anatomy was my true passion when it came to science. I loved learning about how my body was put together to make my everyday functioning possible. Anyway, Spring of 2009 I was happily a new English major. And I stayed that way through to my graduation in 2013.
By the time I started trying to figure out how I'd use my major in a job, I was wondering what exactly I could do that would satisfy my interests. And I wasn't coming up with much. I would have probably liked to go into publishing, but that business is changing so much these days. I just didn't feel it would be a safe career choice for me.
Advanced Grammar during my senior year showed me an area of my major that I hadn't thought about before: language, development, and phonetics. I was quickly convinced that this might be an area that would capture my interests but needed to figure out what that looked like in the employment field. And so I discovered Speech-Language Pathology.
I started researching how to become a Speech-Language Pathologist and I found out what requirements I'd have to satisfy:
1. a Master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology
2. pass the Praxis exam
3. completion of a Clinical Fellowship Year following graduation
4. CCC's (Certificate of Clinical Competence)
To find out more, you should visit the ASHA certification webpage, and also check out the State-by-State requirements for your state.
At this point, I figured that my next step was getting my Masters degree. In order to get a Masters in Speech Path, there are a list of requirements, most of which I did not yet have:
1. undergraduate pre-requisite courses such as:
a. Intro to Communication Disorders
b. Phonetics
c. Anatomy & Physiology of Speech and Hearing
d. Intro to Audiology
e. Neurological Bases of Speech and Hearing
f. Language Disorders
g. Articulation Disorders
2. 20 hours of clinical observation hours (with signature of a certified SLP)
3. GRE test scores
4. GPA of at least 3.0 (and many average GPAs of applicants are much higher)
Now, each grad program you apply to will likely require different pre-requisite courses, but most of the ones that I applied to required the ones I listed above. Additionally, the clinical observation hours should be a mix of adult and pediatric, with as great a variety of disorders as you can manage. This might be difficult if you are doing your classes online (like I did), but all I can tell you is to call around at hospitals and schools to try to find people who will let you come and observe.
So with the knowledge above, which I found over the course of hours of reading up online, I decided to enroll in an online Pre-SLP program to get my pre-requisites. Not what I hoped to be doing when I graduated in 2013, when I had originally hoped to be done with school forever! But I don't regret my decisions, and at that point in my life, I was beginning a journey that would direct me towards an amazing career field.
Up Next: What Schools Offer Pre-SLP Courses?
