Episode 4 l Season 1: Collectively talking about Desi

Highlights from this episode:

We get to know Desi and all that she's accomplished in her journey to healing her relationship with Spanish and becoming a Spanish Bilingual SLP.

Transcript

we are here with desi and i will be your host today ingrid we are onto episode four of season one of our podcast this episode i am so excited to share with you it is titled collectively talking about desi we will get to know desi all the way from the beginning and i can't wait for you to hear her story desi how's it going? DESI: i'm good how are you ingrid? INGRID: doing good just enjoying the last bit of summer and beginnings of fall over here in the southwest DESI: yeah well here in the northeast it's definitely fall so totally different INGRID: i know we are in a totally different time zone DESI: yeah yeah actually the leaves here have already completely changed so in my experience usually - well before the end of october all the leaves have fallen onto the ground so i'm just waiting for that to come around INGRID: well i can't wait to hear your story desi i feel like it'll just really bring home a lot of the things that i love about you so i'm so excited for this today DESI: oh thanks ingrid yeah um so i guess i'll start with um just growing up um so i was actually born in elizabeth new jersey um i grew up there and it's a place that i think sometimes i think that it hasn't really left an imprint on me but then other times i realize it really has so i um was born in elizabeth um to cuban parents my mom came to the U.S. when she was 14 with my grandparents and my dad arrived in the U.S. when he was in his 20s through the Mariel boatlift that happened out of cuba so yeah they met um in miami but um we ended up living in new jersey for um the beginning of my life and i have a brother who's two years younger than me i guess the first thing to know about me um especially growing up in new jersey was i was very close with my grandparents um my grandmother stopped working around the time that my brother was born and he she took care of us until i started going to preschool and so because of that and because my parents only spoke to me in spanish um I - my first language is spanish and i didn't um speak english until i got to school so i was a sequential language learner um yeah and um and so it's just um interesting i remember my grandmother um mentioning to me you know when i was younger that you know that i did mostly fine you know not knowing english and getting um you know put into like a preschool setting um but that there were definitely some moments where other kids would try to i guess push me around um and i would tell my grandmother but i didn't know how to address it so i just like let it slide it's you know it's one of those things that like i have no memory of that but um i think for her it was just kind of tough to like imagine me having to navigate a whole setting a whole new setting by myself um and interestingly enough i think that i don't know it i i'm a very i'm a very social person now but when i was younger especially like elementary through high school i was very painfully shy which i i mean i think people who know me now think that that's crazy when i say that um i i am pretty talkative and uh open about things but um i think yeah maybe you know the fact that i learned the languages sequentially or you know that i wasn't completely comfortable speaking in english especially when i was really young i don't know if that played a role but INGRID: I can see you being more like selective if that makes sense DESI: sure yeah I mean INGRID: like not with everybody you would be your full self DESI: yes and actually i mean i i think the in all in all honestly the way i perceive myself is more of like um an introverted extrovert like i really love being around people um but i'm just not the person in the middle of the room capturing everyone's attention um INGRID: right DESI:

but i do i do like to mingle so there you go um oh um but yeah so i grew up in elizabeth um you know i went to schools uh with other a lot of children from like diverse backgrounds i you know i'd say that the schools that i went to were just like a very um a mix of like kids from all different races all different ethnicities uh and so that kind of shaped my my experience growing up quite a bit um and then when i was 13 we ended up moving to miami florida which is much more homogeneous like i ended up moving to um kind of like southwest miami florida so in other words like one of the most cuban places on the face of the earth and so going back you know going going to see my family going to miami um you know was really kind of a shock for me in a lot of ways culturally like it it really felt like i was like in cuba sometimes you know depending on where you were or um the interactions that you had and so it just took some adjusting for me um when i first got there and um it really made me reflect a lot more on like okay well what's my identity here and now in this space you know um it really wasn't it you know it changed my whole entire focus um as to who i was or you know trying to understand who i was and um especially in those high school years which are already pretty challenging and i was one of these weird people who um graduated at 17 um just because i was already um like they let me start kindergarten um early because my birthday was so close to the cut off so um so yeah so i um i lived in miami for my four years of high school um i it was a really fascinating place to be um especially as a teenage girl um when i got there like all the other teenage girls would like do their nails and you know they all wanted like louis vuitton belts and sandals and purses and um you know they like were ironing their hair and stuff and i was just like whoa i don't know what any of this is um and so i you know sometimes i'd try to catch up and other times i'm like wait this is just not who i am and so um my biggest thing i think that defined me in that age was the fact that i was in the newspaper um like the editorial team for the newspaper um so that really shaped me i obviously like spent a lot of time writing for the newspaper but we also did a lot of page design and one of the best things about it was we actually took an annual trip to new york city um to go to columbia university for a journalism conference uh and so getting to go there and like see beyond kind of the confines of miami or you know kind of i think almost in a way like kind of seeing beyond what what expectations i had for myself or my family had for me it was just really eye-opening um and it was just kind of like the little bit of a taste of freedom that i really um that really helped me kind of take off and figure out where i wanted to go in life it wasn't really over here nodding my head like you can see me yeah but yes that weird expectations has come up on my episode and on lisa's episode and here it is again yeah yeah so i guess um before i kind of explain you know where i went after high school i think it's important to note like i said um my mom um emigrated to the us with my grandparents um that was actually 50 years ago i can't believe it um in 1971 and so they had a very traditional household you know um it was my mom and my aunt um and my mom was seven years older than my aunt so she was kind of like the one who took care of her um and my grandparents worked all the time um especially when they arrived in the us and so there were just certain things that you didn't challenge um or if you did challenge them there was a lot of pushback just expectations around what children are supposed to do what especially daughters what daughters are supposed to do... - my mom and my aunt kind of raised me to be a little bit of a rebel um even though i don't know that they would think of it that way so like i'm saying like this it was kind of like a perfect storm like that little bit of inspiration from them and then taking a trip like this one where i could see a little bit more of the world um it you know those those things started to define me a little bit more and um and so

what happened after high school was that i ended up going to the university of florida and that was a big drawn-out battle with my family because the university of florida is six hours away from miami and nobody had ever left the family to ever go to college um you know my mom did night school and eventually graduated with her degree um my aunt did go to college but it was you know right next to home so i was the first person in my entire family to have that experience of going away and um it was a it was a really big full family battle for me to convince them to let me leave um and you know i i just i i knew that i needed it um but it just it's so funny because um now looking back i don't know you know you you just always think about the ways that things could have played out differently um so yeah so anyway things didn't play out differently i did go to UF um and i was an english and spanish major i majored in english i always loved literature and so i i knew from graduating high school that i'd be an english major and the spanish part really creeped up on me so i think this is the other component of my life experience that i think is important to share on this podcast yeah um so big secret reveal time i went through uh significant language attrition in spanish um the older i got by the time that i was in high school i really didn't want to speak spanish at all so my grandmother would say you know do you want to eat now do you want to eat later you know you have all these like home home conversations which are really basic language um conversations and you know where i try to explain something to her about my day and i would say something wrong or the verb would be wrong and she'd be like ah you know you don't say it that way you say it this way and so anyway it got to the point where i between that like not being able to effectively communicate and then having some spanish courses in high school that were like less than um what's the word i'm looking for just less than inviting you know um or accepting my you know i that i had this um negative perception of spanish like i really think that we could do so much more healing with people um that are you know second generation speakers um but it just felt like a very judgmental space um right so i just i just wanted to get through it and be done and it was just i my spanish teacher was so upset with me my spanish 2 teacher it was a spanish 2 for heritage speakers um which they offered at the high school that i was at she was so upset with me at the end of spanish 2 but she pulled me aside and said like no you have to continue taking spanish and i said no i'm done i'm not doing this anymore um i'm like why would i do this like you know i had like a perfect a in the course but she would always give me like a c for behavior because i just it was apparent that she it was hard for her to reach me like i i didn't feel um seen by the way that the course was designed so anyway um yeah um and so i um i went to college i started taking english classes i started taking other classes um that i was interested in uh just other languages i tried taking italian that was really hard to get into it's a very popular course um i took french i took latin and then eventually i was like you know what i was like i do speak another language even if it's not perfect i should try to improve in that language so i did a placement test and i was also fortunate that at UF they offered a heritage language program for um people like me people who spoke spanish at home so i started taking courses and then i found out about a study abroad program in Spain um and i ended up going on that study abroad program um a million summers ago now and uh and then i decided once i returned that i was only like three courses away from a major so i finished up the major and um and then by the time that that all happened it was my senior year and i had my head in a million different places i had applied to do teach for america i thought at one point that i was going to go to law school um i was pretty misguided like i didn't know where to go um and ironically enough um my aunt had always mentioned to me like hey you know maybe you should think about doing like audiology or speech pathology and you know she had mentioned that that to me a few times during the course of my college career and so i um I tried, i tried to get into like the 101 courses like the intro courses and they were always full and so i was just like well whatever it's fine i'm not that interested in that um so yes so it's now i'm taking i've taken you up to summer 2007. yeah still wasn't sure what i was trying to do um i did some random odd jobs um that summer and it just so happened that a friend of mine had shared with me that um she was applying for a program to teach english in spain um and i was like oh hey i could do that um and so i got all the information i applied and i was accepted and so in august or september um i moved to spain i got all my stuff i went over there and at first it was pretty terrible in a lot of ways like i was just so alone and i had never been that alone um and it was really hard to find an apartment um i think people just didn't want non-spaniards um which is definitely a thing um over there sometimes um and so my first roommate situation was not great um and oh man so many mis  -

cultural misunderstandings there even though you would think right like similar cultures no no uh so um thankfully i i got in touch with someone else um who was leaving madrid that's where i was living i was living in madrid and um i got connected to this awesome apartment with um every everyone was from different countries almost um they were like three it was a 14-person apartment um so it was very much like i don't know i felt like it felt very european i guess um it felt like a dormitory of kind so um so yeah we were from all these different countries and so i closed this with um my italian roommate and my greek roommate and so i did a lot of traveling um i spent my first year there and then i decided to spend the second year um and so i was mostly in elementary and high school settings for those two years um and i was always constantly thinking like okay well i need to figure out how i'm gonna get back to the us what am i gonna do in the us and i i had one of the um one of the thoughts that had entered my mind was to do graduate work um and it's terrible when you have like this vague you know idea of oh i'll go to graduate school like as if it's like you know like a place where everyone's just hanging out you know um so my issue was that um i wasn't you know again i didn't have a lot of focus i didn't i didn't have a lot of um understanding as you can see you know you're you're 22 you don't really know what you're doing um no offense to the 22 year olds out there i'm sure many of you are very prepared but I  INGRID: I did not know what I

was not doing it 22. DESI: exactly right that makes you feel better so i think that my um i had a a professor um in the spanish department at that time who i had grown close to and so she saw my back and forth situation um with the different options i had considered during my senior year and she said listen she's like why don't you just go to graduate school and do spanish you know spanish and latin american literature um she's like it'll be great for you you know it'll even if you don't decide to do a phd like you know you the worst that you'll have is like a graduate degree um i'm like oh okay sure so

yeah and um i ended up getting accepted to the university of virginia and that's where i ended up after my two years um in spain INGRID: I didn't realize you had been in spain that long DESI: yeah yeah INGRID: I thought like just one semester abroad but you did your abroad and then two years of actually working there DESI: i did yep yep yeah i mean and it's just yeah it was really awesome in a lot of ways um i wish now i wish i could do that all over again but like somewhere else like i would love to go to peru and do that you know um uh but yeah it was honestly one of the best things i could have done because i got to travel a lot um airplane tickets in europe are just way more affordable and so you take a train and exactly yeah so i got around a lot i went i think um i can't i don't know how many countries i went to while i lived there but um that living there and you know kind of having all those opportunities for travel um throughout my life i i've been to 25 countries which is pretty awesome i feel spoiled um but um yeah yeah so it's been i mean it was definitely the most rewarding thing i think i've done um you know one of those like big life milestones um that i'm never gonna regret um returning to the U.S. i was like oh my gosh this was a mistake i should have stayed in europe so aside from having lived in like elizabeth um and miami both of which are like pretty urban areas um you know even though i lived within the suburbs in each of those places um you had access to cities and same way with madrid madrid is a big city um so moving to virginia was like the first time that i was like wow this is rural holy moly like - INGRID: so you're in virginia now right and i graduate with my master's degree um and at that point um i had started dating my husband and i knew that i wanted to stay in the area so after graduating with my master's degree i taught at a high school that was about an hour away and it was in kind of the very southern it was very southern in many ways um so confederate flags, big trucks, boots um things that i just was not ever exposed to in my life before um and it was it made for a really interesting and eye-opening experience um you know working and teaching young minds um who just had had very different life experiences than mine completely so um you know and there were definitely a lot of moments of learning and you know just self-reckoning and helping others along their journey to you know recognize their own biases i was also the english as a second language teacher for one year of that teaching job and so it really put me in a position to be a face to the leadership and the counselors and in the school uh and at the same time kind of started me down the path of advocacy for students who were you know minoritized within the larger scheme of things um so after teaching there um i realized you know teaching um you know it - i liked it but it wasn't gonna sustain me over a long time, long period of time i really wanted to figure out you know what it was what my next step was and i i knew in my heart of hearts that it was in speech i so i knew that i wanted to do speech pathology um because i really enjoyed working with students one-on-one um sometimes the pace of the classroom can just get away from you um you know it the the expectations that are placed on teachers are just unrealistic um and i taught a subject that nobody knew um spanish and you know it just it but it's still made for um just some challenging situations um uh i just felt like there had to be something different where i could use the same skill set uh but just in a different way and a more um what i felt to you know be more more of a reasonable pace uh for me so so after um teaching for three years i decided to pursue part-time work and do my post-baccalaureate and i also did that through the university of florida go gators um so i did that online i caught up on my on my prerequisites and um by that point um my husband and i had already moved to georgia uh where he was working um at emory university just temporarily and so i started applying um to different programs and um it was pretty funny i applied to like an odd smattering of programs because i was applying to universities where my husband had been applying for jobs so i think i applied to um oh was it syracuse maybe in new york and

a california school i think it was um uh csu los angeles um just a bunch of different places um i eventually ended up getting into uga and um and that's where i ended up going um so the neat thing about my program was that i had the option to do a thesis which i did um i'm currently still attempting to get it published um into a journal um that is a very long-term project now as i'm finding out because it's been a long time um yeah it's been three years um and yeah so after um graduate or well before i graduated from my program my first year of my graduate program um my husband was still on the job market um shout out to anybody who is in a phd program and is trying to find work um you know in our field of communication sciences and disorders people tend to find um phd level work like you know either through um some sort of like uh post doctorate fellowship or you know some tenure track position um my husband's job was my husband's profession is not like that um it just there were so few jobs that you know it was one of those things that we we really worried over time you know if he would find uh a tenure track position so he did and it was at the university of maine um and i did not expect to ever live here uh but it's grown on us and um you know in a lot of ways i think this you know i i look forward to seeing how the state is gonna grow over time and change um you know it's it's just a place in flux i feel um so yeah that's that's where INGRID: i need a map of all the places that you've lived DESI: yeah well i just say i'm from the east coast it's just it's worked out easier that way um INGRID: i moved a lot but i moved back and forth to the same places DESI: right right well and i think that that's what's kind of funny about me like i can never see myself living on the west coast um that's no offense to the west coast i've been there i love it i think it's great um but um again i think the you know i i'm always thinking about um trying to get back to my family um and they still live in miami so i try to stay somewhat close INGRIDL i feel the same about living anywhere further east than el paso so no offense DESI: exactly yeah INGRID: how did you then get started with everything SLP that you've got going on because you've got school contracts your private practice how did it all come about for you DESI: um so it's really an interesting question so i'm still trying to figure out how it came about for me um i um so my my CF year i was here in maine i worked for a private practice that did a lot of school contracts um and so i just felt like i was always working um this is a state where there are just distances between people you know um so the job for my CF year was a lot of driving um so i drove a lot i had to fill my schedule um that kind of pressure is just something that i was not really excited about um i was definitely way older than your traditional um SLP graduate um i graduated when i was 32 i think um so i was just kind of um not interested in that kind of lifestyle um but you know i i did my CF I - (I'm thankful) for the experience that i got there um and then i actually went on maternity leave because i had my son at the end of my CF here um so i got my CCC's and then like a month later i went on maternity leave INGRID: i thought i played fast and loose with that because i had my daughter the first after my first year with my CCC's DESI: oh no i i brought it close to the best like yeah like oh no actually i lied so i remember that i got my um i got my letter with my CCC's on april 11th and i remember that because that's my grandmother's birthday and then i had my son april 26th so INGRID: So you did get your CCC's before he was born DESI: yes but barely INGRID: but you're pregnant your whole CFY pretty much DESI: yes yes INGRID: oh my gosh DESI: which i do not recommend - i mean i especially hear like oh man i slipped on the ice a few times um INGRID: oh my gosh! DESI: yeah yeah this is it's it's just a INGRID: you're looking at making it sound inviting over there DESI: well i mean i'm not trying to make it sound i i think that it just so many things about the work that you can do here will depend on um you know i think for me what i realized is that living here i needed a job that would offer me flexibility um because i didn't want to have these like slip and falls and you know i wanted to be able to um command my time a little bit better um so i just i my CF here i and i think that you know a lot of people might feel this way um it just felt like i could never catch up and i hated that feeling um i you know after teaching i felt like i had almost made a commitment to myself that i wasn't going to feel that way any longer or you know that i that i couldn't be that um that i i didn't - I didn't want to feel irresponsible you know what i mean like you kind of map things on to yourself when it's like not you right yeah so um so INGRID: well when you're a cf everything takes you longer to do is what i tell my CFs like don't feel like this is going to be forever DESI: yeah and that's so awesome INGRID: yes your first report will take you longer and that is okay and it'll be easier as you go DESI: right right and i i think that's yeah see that's so awesome like i've never um i've never had an opportunity to mentor a student um at least not not an SLP student um and so i feel like um that's i mean that's just an awesome experience i i don't uh i feel like again i and i i've mentioned this to you before uh at some point but here in maine um again the people and the resources are kind of spread out so um after going on maternity leave i had some time to think about you know what i wanted to do and i'm one of those people who um i just i loved both sides of things like adults and kids um and so i applied to a job in home health and i got it um and what i ended up doing was transitioning to home health on a part-time basis and then the other thing that i did um that year after my c after i got my ccc's was doing the leadership education and neurodevelopmental disabilities program aka LEND um through uh the university of new hampshire and the university of maine so it's an interdisciplinary program um it brings together like professionals from professionals and family members of people with disabilities and so it was something that i had like a weekly commitment to and it had a stipend so anyway it was perfect for me um at that point in time and it was great because i got to learn a lot more about um just um things that we don't really review very well in grad school or i feel i feel like we didn't spend much time on it at all but like social determinants of health um different models of disability yes yeah and so it i felt like it kind of like completed me in a lot of ways professionally and so i've been affiliated with them ever since um and i'm fortunate that this is my second year now as a faculty member for them so i mentor a student each year um INGRID: way to bury the lead desi

DESI: well so all right so then... INGRID: if you guys can't tell desi is the humble side of the equation of our tagline oh my gosh liza and i bring the bold and loud and desi is so humble DESI: i need to i need

to, i don't know if it's humble but i definitely take on too many projects sometimes but i do love the projects and i love um dividing up my time um into different uh things that give me positive energy so anyway i think that's going back to that question about private practice that's how this all led to this point where i realized that if by working for somebody else i felt like i was leaving money on the table um i knew that i could contract as well and at the same time um i knew that the work setting that i had maybe had in mind when i graduated like some sort of like multi-disciplinary clinic with bilingual speech pathologists you know even one you know bilingual speech pathologist from who spoke different languages or you know access to interpreters like that all just kind of dried up um INGRID: yeah that's like a dream scenario that i don't know that it exists DESI: well i mean and maybe it doesn't and maybe that's kind of the problem i had to kind of built it up in my head that way um but then you move to a rural state and and the equation changes again so right so i um so i decided to yeah build something um up that i could shape into my own um and so my i had a friend who used to call it a big hairy aggressive goal i think it was a b hag uh my aggressive goal is um that one day i would like to be the person who does school-age evaluations for children who speak other languages um you know and i would contract with school districts across the state so INGRID: that's an awesome goal DESI: right now we're doing yep 'poco a poco' i mean I'm just moving slowly through it but um but yeah that's that is so far yeah a pretty good summary of me from childhood till now INGRID: that's amazing i did not know that you had not been in miami this whole time like i kind of knew you were born in new jersey but i assume that you grew up in miami DESI: no no i um it's it's so hard because people ask me all the time like where are you from and it's easier for me to say miami because my family still lives there right and um yeah and I mean INGRID: i just say texas when i don't feel like going through my life story DESI: exactly yeah and i but it's been really interesting lately i've i'm starting to recognize my upbringing in new jersey really shaped me in a lot of ways you know i i like INGRID: yea you said until 13. DESI: yeah i i had you know access to different cultures and you know people of different backgrounds and i just it's pretty funny um here in maine um i have a group of friends and um before covid you know we would do weekly trivia and stuff like that and um we we recognized that like all of us were 'from away' which you know it is the wording that they use here to say you're not from here and so our even our uh trivia name was mainly immigrants which is pretty good

yes so um i mean but it and it's it's really crazy like i think yeah most of the people that i know here are just not from here so but that's me in a nutshell um INGRID: thank you desi i loved getting to know more about you DESI: thank you for having me and yeah i look forward to sharing other personal experiences throughout the podcast awesome INGRID: thank you so much! DESI: thank you!

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