A Day in the Life of a Future Speech Pathologist

Figuring out the future is hard. Heck, figuring out the present can be challenging enough!

The second in a series of student interviews, this future speech pathologist unveils that you don’t have to be a doctor or a nurse to help people. See just how much passion and hard work it takes to make it in this field.

Get inspired.

˜˜˜˜˜

Lydia Hayes, age 20

Communication Sciences and Disorders, Junior

Florida State University

Nobody grows up saying they want to be a speech pathologist. What made you want to go into this field?

LH: Well, I definitely didn’t know what Speech Pathology was when people were young and saying they wanted to be doctors and ballerinas and astronauts. But I came to college thinking I wanted to be a Bio major and be a doctor. I took the Bio for Majors class and the lab and I said, “I have no idea what I’m doing. I need to find something else.”

I knew I wanted to help people. At that point, I knew I wanted to be a physician’s assistant or doctor or something like that, and it all came from my mom being a nurse. She really inspired me with how much she loves her job and how much she loves helping others.

So, I thought about nursing. But at the time, FSU’s nursing program was that kind of closed type of thing where you had to apply before you even got to FSU. You’re locked into this nursing track for four years. So, I couldn’t do nursing. But my mom told me, “Hey Lydia, you should really consider speech therapy,” and I said, “Whatever, mom. If you tell me I have to do something, I’m not going to do it.” It’s like, if my mom tells me to major in something, no way I’m going to do it.

But I took the Intro to Communications Sciences and Disorders class as one of my science classes and I really enjoyed it and saw the potential to love it as a profession, even though my professor wasn’t that interested. It was the content. The content was really appealing to me. It was a way to be a nurse and a helper without having to be exposed to blood and guts and all that stuff.

I think I just found that it was a good happy medium, whereas I thought I could push myself to be a doctor or something. But maybe speech therapy was more realistic and more attainable.

http://www.blogcdn.com/jobs.aol.com/articles/media/2012/08/a-speech-pathologist-640×468.jpg

Speech pathology versus audiology –which track are you in? 

LH: Speech therapy. They say you’re a speech therapy major in undergrad, but when you get your Masters degree, you are a speech pathologist. One day (laughs).

Describe what that is.

LH: Speech therapists work with people who have speech disorders or disruptions. Those can be things that are acquired, like traumatic brain injuries that cause aphasia. Or they can be things that are developmental, that you are born with, like a stutter or a cleft palate. So those are the kind of people we work with. We help them communicate effectively and it generally is either with children or with the elderly. So, there’s that kind of split in our profession of people. Like, a lot of kids stutter, but they grow out of it, or a lot of older adults who have had strokes, and therefore, their speech is slurred and hard to understand.

http://www.speechadvance.co.uk/therapy.htm

Within in the range of speech therapy, all the populations that it covers, and all the different sort of ailments that can lead to a speech impediment, what sort of focus do you want to go into?

LH: Right now, I am looking into getting a really broad range of experience. I have worked with children and young adults in the past, but never in a speech therapist capacity. I do like to work as a camp counselor or as a youth intern. So I am interested in young adults.

But also, something that I never thought I’d be interested in is the elderly. If you had asked me five years ago if I ever wanted to work in a skilled nursing facility or a retirement home, I would have said, “No way!” But some of the research that I’m involved in right now looks at how best we can teach older adults a second language. There is evidence that bilingual adults develop dementia at a later onset than monolingual adults. So, if that true, how can we give the second language to older adults so they can kind of slow the onset of Alzheimer’s or dementia? Old people learn languages in a different way than young people. But there isn’t much research on how to teach older adults a second language. So, working in that experiment has really given me an appreciation for working with older adults, and I think that they are often a neglected population.

Everyone, and this sounds sexist, but everyone’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m a speech therapy major and I want to work with kids! I love kids!” I was kind of there, too. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t work with kids or with young adults. But there is definitely something in me that is called with working with the elderly. Like, if were watching a video in class about an older adult that has dysphagia, a swallowing disorder, and they can’t sit at the table with their family and have a meal with them because of this disorder they have, that really strikes a chord in me, where other people are like, “Man, that’s gross” (laughs).

I did a term paper this summer where I did a lot of research on dysphagia and ways to treat it. It’s kind of a disease that is in-between professions and it’s kind of between responsibilities. Like, doctors are saying, “No, that’s a speech therapist’s job,” and speech therapists are saying, “No, let the doctors do it.” But dysphagia is something that can lead to pneumonia and death if a person inhales their food and it gets into their lungs.

So, that is an interesting part of speech therapy to me, where there is this intersection with medicine and with saving lives, and not just with correcting speech and improving quality of life with children or young adults or whoever.

You’ve done research. You’ve mentioned papers and experiment you’ve been involved with. What else are you doing to prepare yourself for your future career as a speech pathologist?

LH: I am hoping to shadow at speech therapist clinics this summer in Jacksonville. I have most of my experience in this research realm and not in clinical side of speech therapy. So, I am hoping to go in and observe at some clinics this summer and get more of a feel for what therapy sessions look like and treatment and treatment plans look like and preparing therapy materials and going to therapy sessions.

http://theporcelainrose.com/2015/05/28/advice-for-leaving-cert-students/

Describe the rigor of your major.

LH: It’s a lot harder than people think it is.

It also is often mis-classed with, “Oh, you’re in the College of Communication Information –you’re a Communications major.” But we have a lot of scienc-y kind of medical training that I think a lot of people don’t know about. Like, we have an anatomy course that is about everything from the lungs and the mouth. It’s like anatomy for speech and hearing disorders, so we learn about the lungs and the pharynx, the larynx, the mouth, the different shapes our tongue makes when you say different words. You have to know all these muscles in the tongue, and all these muscles at the back of the throat.

There’s also phonetics, which is how you transcribe words how they sound. It’s kind of like learning another language. But that’s an important tool for documenting how someone’s speech is disordered because you can’t just rate the word that they kind of said. You have to have this kind of specific symbol system.

We also have classes on research methods and on acoustics. That was a hard class (laughs). It’s kind of like physics, but for speech therapy majors. And we have some introduction classes to audiology, but it’s much more heavily focused on speech therapy.

So, yeah. I have definitely found the classes to be pretty rigorous, especially in the sense that speech therapy is kind of a health profession.

http://theeverygirl.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_full/public/articles/images/theeverygirl-content-journal.jpg?itok=y0Wow9Sw

In between classes, in between research, clinics, and everything that you do, what do you do to restore your energy?

LH: I feel really good when I run. But I think lately in the time crunch of things, I’ve had to find solace and rejuvenation in smaller things that are less of a time commitment. And I definitely think that journaling helps me. I can get overwhelmed worrying about everything that’s due and all the commitments that I have. I think journaling helps me to kind of rein it in and remember what is important and what is extraneous. So, just kind of thinking about what I think and writing it down and trying to get it out, rather than let it all spin around in my head.

What is the last movie you watched?

LH: Last movie that I watched was Karina, Karina (laughs).

Last song you listened to?

LH: Oh, something by Daz ‘cause I’m going to see them at Cascades. I have their CD that someone lent me, so I don’t know the names of the songs. I just know that I listen to track four and five because they’re my favorites (laughs).

Guilty food pleasure?

LH: Oh my gosh, where you take peanut butter on a spoon and then you roll it around in chocolate chips (laughs). Oh, that is the most horrible thing and the most wonderful thing.

Any last words?

LH: Consider speech therapy, even if your mom tells you to.