bibliophile222

Personally, I get excited exploring a new area, and I've moved enough in my life to not really feel homesick. The hardest part of moving for me this last time (I know this is silly) was finding new restaurants. I'd lived in my previous area for over a decade and had many an amazing meal at Johnny's Tavern, Thai Garden, Ginger Garden, The Black Sheep, and Primo Pizzeria (major bonus points if anyone can guess where I was living!) After two years in my new location, I still feel like I don't have a favorite pizza or Chinese place, and I'm lacking that strong connection to the businesses that I had before. I guess the moral of the story is that I shouldn't eat out so damn much!

This is definitely hard to do in grad school, but try to maintain as much work-life balance as possible. Go to school every weekday (if you're in an on-campus program) and get as much work done as possible at school so that you have some time to decompress at home. It took me until my last semester to realize that when I don't do my work at home, it's easier to treat school like a job and work hard all day instead of procrastinating and taking lengthy breaks like I did. Of course, sometimes this isn't always possible (especially in a pandemic when we're all stuck at home) but it helps!

I don't think a lot of people in the SLP sub check the Q & A section. Try posting back in the SLP sub. Also, if you haven't checked it out already, reddit has an SLP and an SLP Grad subforum where you can talk to more people who have been through this process.

Today is my birthday and my graduation day. At first I thought it was a bummer that we're doing a virtual ceremony, but now I'm really excited about it. It's just our department, so it will be very intimate and personalized. We're doing things like senior quotes and superlatives, individualized remarks about us from the professors, and two of us are giving speeches, none of which would have been able to happen in a traditional ceremony. Aside from not bring able to celebrate together in person, I'm actually happy that it turned out this way.

I'm really not sure. You'd have to ask someone in the department for that info.

Reddit has an SLP and SLP Grad School sub forum. You could post there and see who is in the area and is interested. However, for best results I would suggest checking your local universities. If they have an SLP grad or undergrad major (it might be called Communication Sciences and Disorders) then contact someone in the department and they can recommend students who might be interested.

Some online post-baccs take longer, but not all. The one I did at Pacific University was only 2 semesters. I had zero extracurriculars, just a lot of completely unrelated work experience. Seriously, though, please do not stress so much about a post-bacc! Getting into one is much easier than getting into grad school.

I was just going through some old files from undergrad and found something that made me cry from laughter. My undergrad was online at a for-profit school, so there were some students that, well, maaaybe weren't ideal candidates for higher education, to put it politely. In one class there was this girl who wrote INSANE discussion posts. In addition to the terrible grammar and lack of insight into the topic, her posts were incredibly long and veered from wild tangent to even wilder tangent. She found vocab words (I'm guessing from the thesaurus in Word) that made no sense in context but substituted them in for simpler words. So it turns out that I saved all of this girl's bizarro discussion posts in a Word doc and was able to reread them all. It feels like Christmas! I think my favorite line is "The cusp is that ants are a common living thing these days. That will never go away. The cogent is how many are there???" Amazing.

Not in my experience. I got into Pacific University's and UVM's online post-bacc programs and both application processes were really simple and quick. I have heard that some California post-baccs are hard to get into because of the high demand, so you have to submit your app right when the portal opens (someone correct me if I'm wrong about this). Another option would be for you to apply as a non-degree student and take a la carte prereqs online through ENMU or USU. I've heard good things about either of those options, and since you're not entering a program I would imagine that they accept everybody. Relax! Getting your prereqs really shouldn't be that stressful--just make sure you do well in them!

I've been a horrible, chronic procrastinator since 3rd grade but managed to turn everything in on time during grad school! What helped me the most was using a planner. I would write down what needed to be done each day and then cross it off. Crossing things off was incredibly satisfying. There were plenty of times when I didn't get each day's tasks done, but seeing it there un-crossed-off would nag at me so that I still completed it before the deadline. Another thing that just naturally helped was when things were due. Generally, I would do my class readings during the week because they required less mental energy than writing. I therefore saved the bulk of my written work for the weekend, when I had two whole days to do nothing but schoolwork. Since things were generally due at the beginning of class, I always ended up finishing work a couple days before the due date. If something came up and I couldn't finish it on the weekend, I would still have a few days of wiggle room. The third thing that really helped me was to break up tasks into smaller chunks. If you have to read 4 chapters, read one each day instead of putting off all of it. One day, do the research for a paper, the next day write an outline, and the third/fourth days write the paper itself. Write down each step in your planner so you can cross it off and feel motivated. One of the good things about grad school is that a lot if your work will be practical: either clinic documentation or practical assignments. Theres more motivation to get the work done because it's less abstract and more meaningful. Also, this may vary by program, but we didn't have any long papers to write. All our teachers taught us to be succinct and enforced maximum page limits, so I hardly ever wrote anything longer than 4 or 5 pages, which made it easier to avoid procrastinating.

You'll be fine! Remember that a lot of people come in from out of field or have been out of school for a while. There will be some review at the beginning, and I bet more of the foundational stuff will come back to you in your new courses.

At least you're somewhere warm! We've had one 70-degree day all year and the leaves still aren't fully out yet. It might snow on Saturday.

This doesn't happen to everyone in grad school, but you might be pleasantly surprised at how interests might change once you begin. I entered thinking I might want to work with adults, and aphasia/TBI interested me rhe most, but now I'm applying to CF positions in schools and have spent most of grad school doing research on childhood apraxia! I just sort of fell into research because I did well in a professor's class and it ended up being really interesting. The non-thesis research project I completed for a graduation requirement is still ongoing, and if I want to keep working on it after graduation we can hopefully get some articles published. I hadn't planned on doing a Ph.D, but if I ever do I'll have some solid research under my belt. Even if you do know exactly what you want to research, and what your professors are doing isn't closely aligned, you could probably still choose to work with the one with the closest interests and branch off of their work. I'm sure they'd be happy to support you in that.

I didn't get into my top choice school (in-state tuition, only 10 minutes from my house) and it was a huge bummer. I ended up picking an expensive school that required me to move a few hours a way over an even more expensive online program. Do I still wish that I'd gotten into the in-state school and wonder what I could have done to get in? Absolutely. Have I been unhappy or unfulfilled with my current program? Absolutely not. It ended up being such a good program and experience with a really tight-knit cohort and supportive professors. I don't love everything about the area I'm now living, but I like it a lot and feel fine staying here at least through my CF. I think you may always have regrets because, hey, that's life and hindsight is always 20/20. It doesn't mean you need to regret where you end up. Worst case scenario, two or so years of your life won't be great, but you'll still have decades of doing what you love. Best case scenario, it could end up being the perfect program for you and you'll make some great friends and connections. It's natural to get cold feet before a huge change in your life, but don't forget to be excited about all the possibilities life now has to offer! And now, a philosophical note: As I've progressed through grad school, struggled with money, etc, I've come to really appreciate the Rolling Stones' message that "you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need". I haven't won the lottery or ended up at my top school, but time and again I've gotten what I need. It may not be as exciting as getting what I want, but it still allows me to be happy and fulfilled. Sorry for the essay! I'm sleepy and procrastinating bedtime. ?

If you wait to accept your loan package at the first school and don't register for classes until you absolutely have to, then you can keep the loans untouched and they won't start accruing interest. I haven't been in your situation, so I'm not positive how it would work, but my guess would be that if you don't register or use any of the loan money, then it could transfer over to the other school. You might want to talk to someone at FAFSA to make sure, though.

I did a post-bacc at Pacific University and they also offered federal loans. I personally preferred doing that since it was cheaper and quicker than a second bachelors. It may not affect your cumulative GPA, but it still looks good to programs if you get a 4.0 in your leveling courses.

I did a two-semester online post-bacc at Pacific UUniversity nd definitely recommend it. You can take out federal loans because it's a "certificate program" (not all of them are), the professors were good, and it has a good assortment of classes that covers all the standard prereqs (neuro, phonetics, language development, etc). Some programs do have less common prereqs so you still might need to take one or two extra through some place like Utah State University and Eastern New Mexico University, which are your best bets for cheap one-off online prereqs. I did not have to do this for my program, just echoing what others have said. The application for Pacific was pretty easy and it didn't take too long to hear back (maybe a couple weeks?) Fill out the FAFSA so you can get some loans if needed.

I'm a second-year at UVM and I also recommend that students defer if possible. I've had a great experience at my program, and they have done a pretty good job of working with us through this, but they're also not offering reduced tuition that I know of. They are having first year students do teletherapy, so you might still get some hours, but everything is still so uncertain that I wouldn't want anyone to start and find out that placements are still in jeopardy next summer. There could be second and third waves of COVID into at least the fall, and until we have a vaccine, or at least a really effective treatment, there might still be periodic shutdowns to cope with it. We typically have our medical placements in the summer, and it would suck for entering first years to not get that experience or to have it pushed back and delay school placements. Our current first years are in a terrible position right now as far as placements are concerned and I really feel for them and wouldn't want anyone else to go through that.

In a two-day span, I got rejected for three different job openings without even an interview. I'm hopeful that my connections at another potential spot will help me get in, but it's still a bummer. I'm applying for positions in schools (preschool through high school), so I have until fall to find something, but my lease is up in July and i would love to know before then whether or not I need to move!

My plan is to choose the income-based repayment plan, pray that Public Service Loan Forgiveness isn't abolished like Trump and Betsy DeVos want, and get jobs in schools so that hopefully the remainder of the debt can be forgiven in 10 years! Or that someone truly enlightened will become president and forgive student loan debt. I can dream, right? Seriously, everyone, YOUR VOTE MATTERS!

I'm in a similar position. My cohort has been tight-knit from the beginning and it really bums me out that a class we had a few weeks ago was probably the last time I'll see everyone together again. I wish we had known somehow and hung out before it was too late. The sad thing is that I'm a horrible correspondent, and as much as I want to keep in touch with everyone, I can see myself drifting away over time. I have a hard time making friends, and it was wonderful to so suddenly be friends (or at least friendly acquaintainces) with 17 other people. I'm hoping I can at least keep in touch with the few who stay in-state and go out to lunch when all this is over.

I have a PDF that I uploaded to drive. PM me your email if you're still interested!

I'm at UVM, and although were right in downtown Burlington, Vermont is a small, rural state. We don't have any problems finding school placements, but medical placements are obviously in shorter supply. Most people do their medical placement over the summer, and many people go home and do a placement in their home state. Those of us who stayed may have needed to drive a ways (I had a 45 minute commute for my placement in a SNF). The people who didn't do medical placements over the summer did them later at our university hospital, when more people were doing school placements and the demand was lower. On the plus side, since we have the only program in the state, those of us who stayed local didn't have any competition from people in other programs, as I imagine happens quite a bit in some areas. People who went home for the summer did sometimes have a lot of competition.

Normally I would say go to whichever school is cheaper, but if the only loans you need are for living expenses I don't think that's too bad. A lot of people work a bit in grad school, and if you budgeted carefully and worked 10 or so hours a week at a flexible job then I don't think the loan balance would be too high. It sounds like Vanderbilt has everything you're looking for and may be worth the relatively small amount of loans you would accrue.

So I know the coronavirus is wreaking havoc on not only people's health and livelihoods, but also on some very grad-school-specific issues like visiting prospective schools and meeting graduation requirements. On a personal note, I have a job in a school that's supposed to start in May, but if the school shuts down I won't have a job and will have to scramble to pay rent, which is really stressing me out. On a less-important note, I'm scheduled to graduate on my birthday, but if the ceremony is postponed or canceled it will go from being the best birthday ever to just another year into my 30s. ? So anyways, I know many of us here are pretty stressed, and I thought I would try to keep positive and find some silver linings to this pandemic to help us all feel a tiny bit better. If anyone feels like adding to the list, feel free! 1. The drastic decrease in travel will likely lead to a significant decrease in CO2 emissions, so at least the environment benefits a bit from this. 2. I know other developed countries don't have this issue, but in the backwards US, many employees don't have any form of paid sick leave. The virus has been leading to increased discussions of state and/or federally mandated paid leave. If this actually becomes a reality it will benefit millions of people. 3. If there's ever an even worse global pandemic (higher mortality rate, worse symptoms) this is at least teaching governments and individuals what works and what doesn't, so in the future hopefully they can handle it better. 4. I haven't read this anywhere, but it seems a safe bet that social distancing and other preventive measures will decrease the spread of other infectious diseases like the flu, which could at least save some lives.