My parents have always encouraged me to do well in school and to get as much education as I can. They’ve tried to instill in me the importance of an education. An education is something that no one can ever take away from you. It’s an investment in you. It’s a necessity if you want a good job, but it’s also a necessity if you want to reach your full potential. What we are do now in school is helping us grow and expand our knowledge as well as exposing us to new ways of thinking. This exposure helps us so much. We learn that we like and don’t like. We learn what we agree with and what we believe. Most importantly, we learn why we believe certain things. All this helps us learn who we are and what we can do.

When I worked at Circuit City, I used to study during my breaks. One of my managers saw me studying with my sign language book one day and made the remark that she always wished that she had made something of her life. That remark floored me. I'll never forget it as long as I live. She had so much regret, and it ate away at her. She always wondered what she could have been.

In my family, there has always been a lot of emphasis placed upon education. My mother is a teacher and has her master’s degree. My father also has his bachelor’s degree in business. I was always expected to go to college and succeed. I admit that my family’s influence is both encouraging and stressful. It helps me to know that they believe I can succeed, but it is also stressful to live up to their, and my own, expectations. I have always felt a need to do my best. I don’t worry about competing with other people. Instead, I have just always tried to do my best. That ‘best’ changes as I take more classes. But as long as I do my best, I’ll never have any regrets.

My decision to major in Speech Pathology was made by process of elimination. I have always wanted to be in career where I could help people, but I was never really sure what exactly I wanted to do. For the better part of high school, I wanted to be a pediatrician. During my junior and senior years, I did a lot of serious thinking about careers. I decided that I did not want to be a doctor because of the stress. I am honestly not that good at handling stress. I would not be able to have a job in which a bad day at the office meant someone died. Next, I looked into counseling. My senior year I was a peer mediator, as well as the unofficial counselor for my group of friends. I was used to having people to come to me with their problems. My friends came to me because they knew that I cared, would be honest with them, and would try to help them. Then, a friend brought me a problem that seriously changed the way I looked at life. This was not some little high school problem. This was a real life problem. We talked a lot, and I spent the next several months worrying about her. I realized from this that I get very attached to people. Now, that isn’t a bad quality in a person. But as a psychologist or counselor, I would need to be able to leave the problems of my clients at the office. If not, I'd go crazy, worrying about their every move or decision. Or, I'd become so detached that I would no longer care at all. I wanted a job in which I could genuinely care about my clients without developing ulcers or losing my humanity. Speech Pathology seemed like a very good choice.

Communication problems do seriously affect the quality of life for a person. Communication is involved in every aspect of life. To live is to interact, and to interact is to communicate. The more time I spend in this major, the more I realize just how important we really are to people. By helping improve communication skills, we are helping people live more complete lives. This is what I love about Speech-Language Pathology.