Interests Part I

During class last week, one of my professors told us that SLPs cannot just be generalists and that SLPs need to choose a specialty/specific interests in our field.  It would be almost impossible to know everything there is to know in our field AND be proficient in it all as well.  I’m at the start of my grad school program and I thought it would be interesting to put down what I am interested in at this point in time.

Right now I am definitely leaning more towards the medical side of SLP and more specifically:

-Speech and language impairments secondary to medical conditions such as TBI (traumatic brain injury), stroke, cancer (and not just oral/laryngeal/brain… other cancers such as breast cancer, etc. and the effects of chemotherapy and radiology on memory and word retrieval), etc.

-AAC (augmentative and alternative communication).  While shadowing for my 25 hours in my post-bacc I observed a few different AAC systems such as PECS, a handmade eye gaze board, and sign.  There are so many different AAC systems to learn about, from the seemingly simple to the highly technological.  

I really can’t wait to get into classes and learn more about all of the above.  It will be interesting to see how much my interests change over the course of my graduate education or if my current interests do not change at all.    

Interests Part II in a semester or two!