self-realization in progress

i'm describing this as a "semi-existential process." it's not a crisis, just a reorganization of thought. and it's not really existential at all.

it started with a comment the professor made in my afternoon class: "don't tell my colleagues...but i'm a speech therapist."

there is some controversy in my profession over how important it is to correct/adjust the perception of ourselves as "speech therapists" among the general public. this is how we've been known for decades, but in recent years many have come to assert that we should encourage others to know us as we know ourselves. in our graduate programs and professional organizations, we are speech-language pathologists (or SLPs, because even those of us who live for speech still like to abbreviate). the idea is that we do a lot more than therapy--and a lot more than speech, for that matter. we evaluate, diagnose, and treat all sorts of communication disorders, both speech- and language-based, and we also evaluate and treat swallowing disorders. for this reason, many SLPs, believe that "speech-language pathologist" is a more accurate and less stereotyped description of the members of our profession.

i don't really care. i believe that my goal is to help people communicate more effectively, so if i can use fewer syllables to more easily convey what i'm going to do for a living, that shouldn't be a problem. you speak to people in the language they understand.

my professor this afternoon spent a lot of time talking about how the disruptions to speech are not foremost for people who stutter--the experience of stuttering is. there is no cure for stuttering: a person who stutters will always be a person who stutters, more or less often. our role as SLPs, then, is not [only] to treat the dysfluency, but to act as a coach, a counselor, a therapist, who helps the person cope with their stuttering. this kind of treatment is not medical so much as it is psychological, and it is very, very human.

it was about this time i started thinking about what i really want to do with my life. i still haven't decided exactly what kind of SLP i want to be when i grow up, but i've got a pretty good idea. i got into the field because i wanted to work with youth who have autism. i'm also very interested in aphasia. in the first half-hour of my fluency class, i knew it was something i was going to care deeply about and want to get more involved in. i've never been terribly interested in traditional articulation therapy, where you meet a kid who can't say /s/ or /r/ and help them learn the sound. i've said for a few years that i want to experience a hospice setting, where i know all my clients are going to die. then my diagnostic brain kicked in: what's the pattern here?

i am interested in treating the people you can't cure. i am interested in treating the people you help to cope.

i'm curious to see where this line of thinking leads me. learning what you want to do is way more fun than learning what you don't want to do.