Desi, Ingrid, & Liza share their Grad School Experiences. Desi asks the tough questions about the diversity in our cohorts, the factors that guided us to each of our individual programs, and the most pressing question of all: Would we do it all over again?
Highlights from this episode:
In the highlights section we will be choosing one word, one idea, one feeling that we are taking away from each conversation.
Access
Representation
Facets
Transcript
today on the bold slp podcast we will be talking about our slp grad school experiences are you ready desi i'm ready how about you ingrid i've got my coffee you've got your coffee all right we'll get right into it so let's talk about the route to slp grad school and what that was like if i remember correctly from our conversation before starting this recording that the three of us did what they call leveling courses or post-baccalaureate courses before going to grad school right that's right awesome kind of for me kind of it feels like we all had a little bit of a hunch that we wanted to work with children we wanted to do some sort of teaching but not necessarily as a teacher and that dream was kind of in us from from our early days uh for me in particular i really didn't even know speech pathology existed like you probably heard from my story in one of the other episodes until basically the moment i was about to graduate from my undergrad so i had to make a decision to do a one-year certificate to get all of my prerequisites in order to become a speech pathologist so for me the route to grad school the hardest part was the move from canada to the us for the certificate but from the certificate to grad school it was smooth sailing because it was all the same professors all the same type of faculty and services i knew who was going to write my recommendation letters like all that stress was gone because it was the same team of people that was getting me to the very same location yeah that's amazing and i was gonna say so for today we were hoping to talk about each of our individual grad school experiences so since you took the lead liza we're gonna go with you first so um you talked a little bit about your uh route to slp grad school especially where you came from canada all the way to the u.s um tell us where you ended up studying and why there so it's funny all the way to the u.s it was definitely a one-hour drive across the board canada is so far okay plattsburgh new york that's where i went um i had applied to a bunch of universities all over canada and in the us but that specific university gave me the most scholarship money and it really just came down to can i afford grad school or not and that was the place i could afford and that is the place i went we are all nodding our heads yes yes um and can you tell us a little bit about plattsburgh um what kind of a what kind of an area is it um or at least in your experience but it was like it's a more conservative area i would say it's there's not there wasn't a whole lot of diversity um it was i mean when i went to walmart or like the outskirts of the university it was mostly white people that i saw but within the university there were so many international students so it was like a whole other island when we were on the university campus but all around it and even the churches and it was uh it was a pretty specific demographic there
and so thinking more specifically about your program what was the racial and ethnic breakdown in your actual slp graduate program
i'm trying to think in terms of diversity we had we had a young man in our program um in the certificate in the certificate here we had two and then one of them decided it wasn't for him so then we ended up with one who went on to grad school um every i mean the rest was all women and it was it was majority white women and there was me i was canadian but canadian sri lankan so there were two other canadians both white then there was a a girl who was half jamaican half white another one who was half indian half italian um and for some reason we all just became the closest friends and we were all studying together we were all doing the same stuff as all the other girls in the class but we just gravitated towards each other because we had such similar experiences when it came to diversity bilingualism different kinds of children that we had worked with and encountered so yeah that was that was my class sounds like you had a really small cohort yeah i think we were like 14 students oh my gosh is that right maybe i'm wrong it was a small number it was less than 20 i want to say
we had a huge cohort compared to that like how many did you have ingrid?
yeah 80 to 85 there was oh my no that's a large school it's a large program yeah i went to school in dallas it's a big big um big - big program big university so i it wasn't too much different for me from undergrad but yeah what was your route to slp ingrid school i was a mishmash of everything in undergrad um i couldn't make up my mind i think on my episode you learned that i was pre-med i was psych i was languages & linguistics major um and so whenever i got into grad school and i decided i was going to ut dallas i started talking to our advisor and he was really encouraging he's like you already have all of these classes all the sciences the neuro the bio psych he's like i don't even think you'll need to level like you'll be right on track like maybe phonetics and intro to slp will be what you need to make up and that's it and that was all so first semester i took intro to comd and i took phonetics and i took neuro one and i believe speech science or voice i can't remember which one but those were my courses for my first semester so i was seeing clients and taking intro my first semester of grad school because yeah he saw that in my in my career and my um kind of experiences he's like yeah you have all the background um it won't be hard and no neuro was easy and then he saw my anatomy background too hmm you know all that stuff he's like you already know all the cranial nerves you know all the stuff in the brain i'm like yep i did all that already good to go just to learn speech stuff and so it was really hard though i don't recommend it to anyone anybody who i talk to now i'm like take your time i was in a rush i finished in four semesters and a summer and as a leveling student to do that it was the hardest thing i've ever done could you tell us um why you chose that program specifically um same as Liza i was a
texas resident and i needed to save money so i applied to mostly texas programs the only programs that i applied to that were out of state were in arizona and new mexico but the cost was just prohibitive it was so much and then the program in arizona i was absolutely not giving any wiggle room on my leveling like it would have taken three and a half years and every semester you guys know it's more money so the program that allowed me to do it faster and be done faster it just meant that i could be earning money sooner so i kind of just went into it just wild without thinking i was 22 years old and i didn't know what was ahead or how it was going to come out but yeah it's crazy thinking back to my 22 year old self i'm like why or how um you know i have so many questions for my younger self um no fear though i miss that about her yeah i mean i do and i don't oh yeah i i think i do i don't i asked myself that all the time like what what was the big hurry at 20 like it was like this big race against the clock in your 20s that like everybody was so far ahead of you i don't know where that came from yeah i hope that's going away because i yeah i mean i feel like it is uh yeah i hope so because i think it just does such a disservice to all of us like our brains are only just fully formed at that age like i don't even understand um how we get so far into these decisions but um just to loop back around one more time to your program ingrid what was the racial and ethnic breakdown um in your grad program it's very diverse i feel very lucky all the time when we have these conversations um i have done a little bit of looking into it and it seems like the bigger the cohort the more diversity there is in the cohort just like statistically if you think about it um so it's less competitive i guess they would say there's more opportunities of getting in if there's more spots every semester so um i felt like we were very very diverse um my cohort was diverse but the professors were not diverse
that's how it goes the only um experience i had with a professor who was maybe even close to being you know having my same lived experiences was my uh neuro not neuro it was through the neurology department because that's another thing they didn't have a bilingual track for me there but um this advisor who encouraged me from the beginning he made sure i had access to learning about the bilingual brain so in the semester my last winter semester he made sure i was in a seminar with this neurologist who studies bilingualism and dementia bilingualism and stroke and she was bilingual and of a diverse ethnic background and she was a great mentor to me so that i was able to get those experiences but it wasn't through the communication disorders department it was through the neurology department but my advisor in comd like made sure i had those experiences because he knew i would come out and be a bilingual slp
yeah i feel like my program was similar in the sense that there was also no emphasis on bilingualism um or any sort of track for that matter um so i went to the university of georgia so i think it's really fascinating that we have just different representations from all over the country and so going to school in the south it just made for a really interesting dynamic i was in a small-ish cohort compared to you ingrid um maybe about 20 some students um and my cohort was largely um largely white um and then ethnically you know i was a latina and then there were two um black students uh and then one asian american student and so we just um you know we we just didn't have like a whole lot of diversity to speak of um and i was the only student maybe i think i was the only or maybe um maybe there were just a few others um it was definitely three or fewer of us who had done the leveling courses and then entered grad school and i had the special honor of being the oldest person in my cohort so fun yeah i'm thinking about that too i'm like we were really diverse we had moms we had a pregnant student we had you know dads we had two guys so that was the diversity there was not there yeah we had one guy yeah i forgot about him sorry but out of 85 students like yeah to have one guy yeah yeah but mom's pregnant slp young old me who i just turned 22 and my friend who was even younger than me were like may and august babies but we were younger than everybody like we were just 22. yeah i started graduall- when you said that i'm like oh my gosh i made so many bad choices yeah well i i started grad school at 30 for slp so yeah it was a totally different experience for me and um i mean i i just think that um i the reason i studied there too was also financially like i mean i was married at that point so that was in you know obviously a financial advantage for me like my husband had a job he uh paid for our rent and so that helped like a lot you know that really limited the amount of loans that we had to take out um and um that was a really big choice in my decision and the kind of weird thing about my application process was that i actually applied all over the country because my husband was still applying to professor positions in his field so he applied to california new york so i actually applied to school in new york state um i can't remember where else but it had this like weird spread going on um but in the end we ended up staying um in georgia um and then eventually my husband did get a job and we moved as i was halfway through my program or three i think it was three quarters of the way through my program so um yeah i think it's just it was a really um it was a different experience for me too because i did a thesis um those are kind of the most unique things i think um and the thesis that i did um i had a friend who also did a thesis and she and i were like we were just always uh either together or kind of going talking about our experiences together and we still stay in touch she's actually doing her phd um so yeah it was it's pretty it was a pretty fascinating experience for me especially being an older student and did you feel like i feel like when you're at a certain age you're kind of happy with the decisions you made and you're no longer in this mad hurry but did you feel like you were in a hurry i had different pressure on me than i think the younger students had um i just i i've had the pressure of like wanting to i this is kind of weird but and i think i i've i've talked to other friends who are doing graduate programs or i have a friend who's doing like a whole undergraduate program um i felt like i wanted to do everything right and i wanted to make the most out of every experience like i i was working all the time um so i really wanted to get the best grades and do the best that i could in clinic and do my thesis and present at asha and um so i just feel like i built it up around me so much um and yeah i mean i i think i needed that at that time but i don't recommend that to people if that makes any sense um i felt like i needed that validation in my 30s um and that i really wanted to like do grad school and do grad school in the most amazing way um and i um and there was part of me that also wanted to do a phd so that was i i still think about a phd every once in a while but um for now i'm just kind of staying put but that's that was what was going on in my 30 year old mind it was definitely different than whatever was going on in the 22 year old mind in my program i at least i think so okay yeah but would you guys do it again i would be in slp over again every time but i don't know if i would do that again that being so fast so furious no time to think about myself take care of myself like it was so unhealthy like i've never been more tired more stressed to more stretched thin more broke i was i was all alone first of all like i don't know that i would have moved away that far from my support system because i stayed in texas but i went across texas which is 11 hours away from my family and 12-13 away from my fiancé, my husband, at the time wow i wouldn't do it the same way i would have taken it slow but every time we talk about it my husband and i are like you did it it's done because he graduated in december and then i graduated the next may and then we got married in november right after we both graduated so that was the plan we just wanted to be done with school before we started our lives and never looked back yeah you just ripped the band-aid off i mean we just did it really fast really fast and i learned a lot i it's hard for me to reconcile how much i loved school so i loved my experiences my practicum my clinical experiences my the opportunities i had in dallas were i don't think that i could have replicated them anywhere else but it came at the cost of my health a lot of the times and so that's kind of like the trade-off of being that busy and having to work so much and have so much pressure on you whenever you're so young i'm like oh but yeah i i have very invaluable experiences that still help me to this day so i would definitely do it again i would just eat more vegetables work out more learn about meditation
and maybe get an apartment where i'm actually going to be going to class instead of 30 minutes away like a total idiot i know i didn't know i i just thought oh here's campus yeah and there were two different areas where we did our clinicals and where we did our classes and one of them was downtown dallas which was a good 30 to 45 minute commute from my apartment oh my i know but my friend and i did the same thing we lived in near the other campus and we tried to work that out you know the best we could navigate it and we carpooled a lot ... would you do it again desi? yes um i think that the challenging part for me was that um i was geographically limited um i mean which is great for me because i think that's what that and the combination of other factors allowed me to have less debt um you know ultimately i tell people all the time like i think you should just get the degree um do it as cheaply as possible you'll get the same credentials nobody's gonna look at where you got your graduate degree from um but from a place of like um opportunities especially like where i was really hopeful about doing a phd um i think it would have been great to work with bilingual mentors uh you know be in areas where um i could have had access to students who are uh bilingual um i did do a thesis with a bilingual student but like literally he was like the one so i would have appreciated more opportunities to do more community-based work um you know with someone who had access to those populations um so i think that's i would do it i would do it again in the sense that i'm happy being an slp but i will also admit that i'm always interested in what other people do i always daydream about other careers um you know i think that's just who i am and um much to my husband's dismay uh but i i do love i do love just how much we get to learn about other professionals so how about you liza? a thousand percent i would do it again i mean i came Liza met her husband down there i know the whole trajectory of my life changed because of grad school and the only i guess negative was that it it puts so much financial strain on us like as a starting married couple both of us with all of our student debt but it's like you said like if i didn't get that degree i don't know if what kind of job i would have gotten and if i would have been like living out my passion because this is really what i loved the things that my grad school could not offer me i don't know if many grad schools were offering at the time anyway more representation more professors of color more neurodivergent professors like it's just i guess it just wasn't a thing back then but it's becoming more and more and i didn't know what i needed until after i graduated and saw all the things i was missing and all the information i wish i had sometimes it was just vague little oh yeah we talked about code switching a bit but what do i do with that information or you know so the the things that i wish could have changed i don't know if i would have found the perfect school that would have offered me all of that but what i did get at my university was i think what i needed for that time and and what i didn't get i'm looking for it now and i'm and i'm finding the right people to help me along that journey like you two so yeah i would do it again i love your answer yes that's awesome and i was gonna say i felt like graduate school was like a buffet like you could grab a little bit of everything i don't like buffets just fyi full of germs i will go to a buffet if i have to but it's not it's it's just you know i i think the problem is that you do get such a small sampling of everything and i'm finding myself way more um empowered as a as a clinician as a therapist when i get to pick my continuing ed and i get to kind of go down the rabbit holes that i want to go down um and i feel like this is a really popular topic in just the slp social media space the idea of like having a niche um but i think it's really helpful to you know balancing all the different things that like for example school slps do i am not that talented i i really bow down to people who work um in school settings like i i i kind of have a a little bit of a niche going and um i find comfort in it um gives me some consistency but i think that that's that's the that's the challenge of grad school like figuring out how to navigate it how to get through because it is a lot it's emotionally intense it's very demanding academically clinically and then you come out and you're like what what what am i doing some of these expectations were completely unrealistic but this goes for programs across the board not just speech therapy correct like these detailed lesson plans of how a session is supposed to go the number of goals you're supposed to hit and the pluses in mind it's absolutely ridiculous and for me specifically when i teach my interns we always go in with a half plan half flexible whatever the child wants to do we end up doing they're having our goals in mind like i mean teachers professors were so on top of me with like where is the student going to stand and like which page of the book are you going to read and i was like um the child might not like that book you know and like but it was it was similar in my education program to the lesson plans we had to write for classrooms they yeah and then when they don't go i'm glad i we never had that you guys ten years ago at ut dallas they were saying lesson plans don't go as planned i learned lesson plans don't ever go as planned we used to do weekly themes hold on a great one ten years stop it always so glad that i went there and that i spent my money there because every time conversations like this i'm like i never learned that i don't believe hold on hold on so you didn't have to write lesson plans for your sessions and have them signed by your professors before you went in nope we had a plan so the one i'm specifically thinking of we had a whole summer that was three-year-olds who were coming in for intensive for six weeks and they assigned us as a team one week that we were in charge of and they recommended we did an outline of the week with a theme my week was 4th of july so we found a book about little mice celebrating 4th of july we read the book every day and we did different activities every day based on the book i made little mice puppets for the last day but it was unstructured child led and just with a general idea of what we were going to do yeah it was my experience was closer to li - liza's like i had to have a plan had to be turned in ahead of time approved and if it wasn't approved like there was enough time in advance of the session to like make multiple edits and turn it back in um i mean which i thought was crazy like the multiple edits part i was like this this is just a session plan um and i think that we were treated like professionals we were treated as peers and we co-planned wow wow i think we could have a whole episode on that because i i do think that um there are many times um in my graduate program like especially being the oldest where i was like i don't understand these dynamics you know um and i and i know that like i tend to look younger anyway so um but it was it was pretty fascinating after having been a working professional to get yes a little bit um i didn't always feel like i was the same age as some i was almost the same age as some some or most of my professors so oh wow yeah yeah but yeah the irony desi the irony was always that when your your lesson plan was completely off and you improvised really well that's when you got the most applause that you were that is the ironic part i know they're like wow look at her shift look at her and i'm like what so funny i'm sitting here like i don't know what you guys are talking about whatever ingrid we're just sitting here jealous of you yeah we're just we're just gonna have our own little side conversation yeah but um we would all do it again
totally do it again but um yeah so i think then um this kind of wraps up our slp grad school experience conversation and i'm glad we had it because it was fascinating and so many different things to consider and how many different experiences or facets of our experiences we were able to share so yeah so what was your word of the episode today or what are we calling it our keyword or take away words mine was i i felt bad but it seems like we all made these decisions based on access so was it you know accessible financially accessible in terms of geography so access is the word that i'm taking away from today access mine is representation it's what i wanted what i needed what i'm going to get awesome yeah i think just the facets you know like they're it's just so multi-tiered what we're you know when we go to grad school we just think okay it's grad school it's this one concept but like we just talked about like it's so so much determined about where you are who you're with um just all the facets that come into play like right what are the clinical expectations what are the academic demands um you know how much does that program center student wellness which i mean again could be a whole separate podcast um i have a funny story about that i will share one day but you know i think that um it just this really i think highlights that there are just so many different things at play no matter where you go to school you know especially how we are so geographically different and where we did our training so that's my takeaway so many facets amazing thank you guys thank you see you on the next one
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