Things That Happen When You're A Speech-Language Pathology Major

Whether it's yourself, a friend, or someone you know, its probably happened.

Not all of us are graced with a friend who is a Speech-Language Pathology major or lucky enough to be one ourselves, but if you are one or know one, there are things we all do. It's happens to mostly everyone in their respective majors, but SLP majors might be a little stranger than others. It's a field driven by curiosity, research and clinical experience, and the people around us, become perfect for studying.

1. We notice any accent you have

Even if you think its subtle or don't notice it, the standard Speech Path student can pick up that you over-stress your Ts at the end of words or you elongate your Os. You might not even have and accent but we've been trained to spot variations in normal speech, and for the times we've pointed it out, sorry.

2. They ask to look in your ears and mouth

This is one of those curiosity things. In class we learned you can see some people's epiglottis, Bifid uvulas, scar tissue from tubes in the ears, or other things, and we want to see. All the anatomy of the ear and mouth become basically the foundation for the major and everyone is a little different. Plus better to learn now than in the field one day.

3. Clinic, clinic, clinic

We aren't as nuts with clinic as some other majors about Clinical and internship (looking at you nursing majors) but its required that at least 25 hours of observations are completed to graduate with an undergraduate degree. And the write ups that accompany them? Forget it, its basically enough to be a small book.

4. We have cried at least once

For some of us, its like at least once a week. There is always an impending mental break down at any point. This major is difficult, maybe not the most difficult but it is definitely not for everyone. Even those of us who it IS for, struggle. Like every major, sometimes you just don't get it, and for us that's scary due to the competition of grad school and GPA requirements some of us need to meet.

5. We write in our own little alphabet

This doesn't apply to everyone, but in the Speech-path world knowing the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) inside and out is one of the foundations for the rest of the major. While some of the letters are recognizable, there are also other symbols, and the letters you do recognize probably don't sound the same as they do to the average person. So we kind of do have our own little code, and yes those are real words and they make sense to us.

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