My interest in becoming a speech pathologist comes from my desire to help people. Also, I've seen the difference that speech therapy can make in a person's communication and in their life. From the time she was old enough to talk, my youngest sister Tasha has been in speech therapy. Her speech was extremely distorted, she had many imprecise articulations, and muscle weakness in her tongue. Those are the things I can think of right off the top of my head. Anyway, she had therapy in preschool, she had therapy when she started public school, she even had speech therapy during the summer. It was those speech sessions in the summer that I got to see. The therapist would come to our house once I week I think. If I behaved and didn't disrupt the session, I was allowed to observe. I made a comment earlier I think in our MOO classes that I thought all a speech therapist did was hold up flash cards, have kids name pictures, say sounds, and then give them stickers. These were many of the things I observed the therapist do with my sister. I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to go into speech therapy, probably since junior high. As I got older I learned more about what therapists do by shadowing and talking to people in the profession. My mom worked at a child development center with early intervention children. Many of them require speech services so I was able to visit a few times and see the therapist work with different children. This was also when I found out that speech therapy was including swallowing therapy as well.

So, my sister is 15 now and she's still in speech therapy, but boy has she come a long way. When she was very young, about the only people who could understand her were me and my family because we were always around her. Now, she may be a little hard to understand at first, or if you're not listening, but for the most part she is completely understandable when she speaks. Her voice quality is different which may make her speech seem different to people hearing her for the first time. I can understand everything she says, and as a senior in this program now, I realize all the work that goes in to therapy. I sometimes go and observe her therapy when I'm home and it feels great to know so much more about everything that's going on. I've seen how a speech therapist can make a difference in the life of someone with a communication disorder and that's exactly what I want to do.