People often ask why I became a speech-language pathologist, what drew me to the field. There were several draws. It feels good to help others. There's a broad scope of practice so I'm continually challenged. In particular, children energize me. While I sometimes turn up the pressure, we generally have fun and laugh a lot. I feel fortunate to spend my days cultivating joy, while simultaneously stretching my brain. I'm blessed to share in others' accomplishments. I'm also special needs myself.

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As a child I experienced huge processing delays. This was paired with unintelligible speech at age 6. In kindergarten, I was placed in the lowest and smallest reading group, with students who now reside in group homes. I struggled for years to learn how to read. With mounting "learned failure," I figured that I was just stupid.  Did you know that a child's IQ can vary 50 (!) points over the course of childhood, with the biggest variable being a parent's involvement? My dad believed that I was capable of straight A's. I seriously doubted it but I set my sights on a 4.0, because, well, I was kind of scared of my dad. I started asking a lot of questions at school and my teachers (God bless them) went out of their way to help me. I somehow developed other effective compensatory strategies. By 7th grade I earned straight A's. 

Freshman year of high school, I joined the speech team and competed in the storytelling category. I bombed. I ranked the lowest at each meet. All season long. But this time failure didn't phase me. I knew how to apply myself. Judges were constructive in their criticism, my coach was supportive, and I kept practicing. The same teachers, who saw me through my difficulties in elementary school, welcomed me into their elementary classrooms to practice telling folk stories to their students. As I acted out the stories, I knew I was nailing it, when every child's face mirrored my facial expressions. My senior year, I actually won the Minnesota State High School League speech competition in the category of storytelling! A month later, like a tortoise stepping over the finish line, I graduated valedictorian.

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Even though I had gained a sense of accomplishment, I really didn't understand how my brain worked or how I got from one end of the academic spectrum to the other, apart from grit. So, yes, I partially entered this field to better understand both my struggles and successes. Now I recognize that they are two sides of the same coin. We all have certain traits that, depending on how we apply them, or depending upon the situation, are strengths or liabilities. Where there is a weakness or liability, I trust that there is also a strength to be leveraged. With this belief, I've come to embrace obstacles--the harder the better. As I see it, the bigger the deficit, the bigger the gain will be. The bigger the gain, the greater the high I experience every time a client, patient, or student makes a breakthrough.  I live for that high. It feels transcendent.