Saturday, May 2, 2009

May Is Better Speech and Hearing Month


Or as ASHA puts it, Better Hearing and Speech Month, but this is my blog and I'll write it in the order I want.

The story of how I became a speech/language pathologist is a study in serendipity.  Back when I was 14 years old, I had a crush on a boy in my English class, although looking back on it I can't imagine why.  Anyway, my English teacher wanted us each to give a short speech on what we wanted to be when we grew up.  I borrowed the neighbors' encyclopedia, which had a section on Careers, and looked for something that would be suitably exotic to impress Crush Boy.  Somehow I settled on audiologist, and although nothing ever came of the crush, the career idea stuck.

When I got to college I discovered that even people who hear can have speech and language problems, and decided I was far more interested in speech pathology than audiology.  So here I am, 40 some odd years after our career day, teaching children how to roll their "r's" and put words together into sentences.  Whereas if I hadn't been trying to impress a classmate, I might have ended up in secretarial school.  

And then years later, when computers and word processing came along, I would have had to learn software, which might have led to my taking computer science classes, and I could have ended up making some real money.  But it doesn't do to be bitter.

Happy Better Speech and Hearing Month, everybody.



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