aucinema

I'm gearing up to start my last semester of my SLP master's program and my best friend is currently finishing up in OT, so I guess I have some perspective on both. I had never heard that SLP was more "political" than OT before nor seen any evidence of that, so I can't really comment. I've worked in hospitals and nursing homes and, at least in those settings, the amount of paperwork and stress is probably about the same for speech and OT. We all have to write SOAP notes, fill out insurance forms, and fill out physician requests notes for changes in the patients' treatment plans. In the schools, both SLPs and OTs are responsible for filling out IEPs and other necessary paperwork when they are involved with a child. I think it's really more about setting, such as B23 vs. public schools vs. hospitals rather than OT vs. SLP. The major difference would probably be that SLPs typically have larger case loads, adds stress. That said, this also means that there are probably more job opportunities for SLPs, especially in the school systems. As for OT, I don't know if you could find a job where you wouldn't have to help people use the bathroom ... But I will say that if that's a deal breaker for you, then I would find another career path. I personally love SLP, but OT sounds fun, too. Good luck.

I second the "Notability" vote. I download all of my class powerpoints into the application and am then able to take notes on them, highlight them, and draw on them. I also download journal articles that I need to read into Notability so I can then have all of them in one central location. I find reading on the iPad much more pleasant than reading on the computer, especially since you can highlight with a simple finger swipe and easily take hand written notes. The app also lets you create subjects and dividers within those subjects for easy organization. I also highly recommend dropbox if you aren't already using it. I upload all of notes to dropbox, which I also have installed on my laptop so that they are accessible to me no matter what device I am on. This is good for peace of mind as well as organization. I find that I like iCal for managing my calender, but I also use "Wunderlist" for day-by-day to-do lists, which one thing that I feel ical really lacks. It's a simple app, but it works. I also recommend looking for a good voice recording app. I'm currently forgetting the name of the one I use and don't have my iPad on me at the moment, but there are several out there that are pretty decent.

I'm not an ADD expert, but I don't think it would hurt to get yourself checked out. If I remember correctly, one of the hallmarks of add is a tendency to overlook details (i.e. errors like incorrectly transposing digits) and difficulty following directions (i.e. drawing a semi-circle instead of a circle). Also, is it possible that you are "zoning out" during class without really realizing it, therefore causing you to miss things that the professor is emphasizing? It's difficult to give you an answer from the information you provide since you make it sound like you're doing everything right, but clearly something isn't working. Good luck!

Better to be over prepared! :-)

I totally understand what you are saying, but I am just speaking from what I have been told by supervisors. At our clinic reports are typically signed in blue, but there is a lot of other paperwork that is required to be done in black. I'm just saying that black pens are also a good investment!

I think for many clinics, reports and official documentation are typically supposed to be kept in black ink. The standard in our clinic as well as the SNF where I do my off-campus placement is for session notes and record forms to be done in black. So stock up on good black pens too!

I think you are creating unnecessary stress for yourself. If you don't want to invite those people - then don't. I don't think members of your cohort/advisors/coworkers expect to be invited to your wedding (unless maybe you are also close outside of the university, but that's obviously different).

California's licensing requirements: http://www.asha.org/advocacy/state/info/CA/licensure/ From the website - Reciprocity: Holders of the ASHA's Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC) satisfy the requirements for licensure. Persons licensed in other states who have worked for one year but who do not possess the ASHA CCC are exempt from the required professional experience requirement however must provide proof of education, clinical practicum, and passage of national exam.

I agree with what everybody else has said. Don't outright say that you don't want to do a PhD there, with him, but tell him you're applying to multiple places to be safe. I was actually in a similar experience a couple of years ago where my adviser for a clinical program started ushering me into the PhD without any encouragement from me. At first, I tried to keep an open mind, but at the end of the day I knew that I did not want to be in academia. I was sooo worried about disappointing him and worried that his views of me would change if I told him that I didn't want to do the PhD. After months of anxiety and fretting, it finally came down to me sitting down with him and telling him, "I don't want a PhD." Luckily, my adviser is an awesome guy who understood and was genuinely supportive of my declining the academic route. Anyway, the point of that whole story is that I learned that it's that it's far better to say something than not. You will feel much better with that weight off of your shoulders, regardless of how he responds. I still remember how light I felt that day after I walked out of his office. I no longer felt like a fraud! So yes, tell him that you are planning on applying to other programs as well. If he has any sort of integrity he will understand. If he should treat you poorly after you tell him this, then cross that bridge when you get to it. Whatever his response, it can't be worse than committing yourself for several years to doing research you don't like at a program you don't like.

Caterpillar is correct. Many states have reciprocity agreements, but NY is notoriously strict. Essentially, some states have higher standards than others so your license may transfer easily to one state but not so easily to another. This is something you should research now, so that there are no surprises down the road. I am not all that interested in school-based SLP, but I am getting my certification "just in case." I'm one of those people who likes to keep my options open - especially in this economy!

I gave up "dream" program to go to well-respected but less prestigious local school. I'm happy with my decision. I was lucky though in that my local university is very medically focused, since that's what I want to do. If they were school-based my decision might have been much tougher. Obviously, this is a decision only you can make, but for me, I wanted the freedom to choose whatever job I wanted after graduate school without worrying about finding a high paying job to pay off the massive amounts of debt I would accrue. I also have some other goals in my life, like thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, that will cost money and require me to take a significant amount of time off from working. I want the financial freedom to do that in 2 or 3 years - not 10 or 15. I also want to go into marriage, home ownership, and parenthood without the additional burden of student debt. Basically, I just really, really did not like the idea of being tied down by thousands and thousands of dollars of debt. So I guess, in the end, it depends on what your priorities are. If your biggest priority is to work in a medical setting in a big city, then the extra money might be worth it. I just happened to have a lot of goals that have nothing to do with my career that made me wary of excessive debt. It's a highly personal choice, but I do encourage you to think about your goals for all aspects of your life, not just your career, when making a decision.

I know you've already gotten a few responses, but I figure I'd throw in my two cents as well. I'm a first year student, second semester. Overall, the program is definitely stressful but the stress ebbs and flows just like anything else. For example, this week, I had three 12 hour days on campus, but next week my workload will be much lighter and I expect to only have one twelve hour day. M: Class 9-11:30, Clinic 1:30-4 T: Off-campus placement from 8:30-12:30, Class from 2-3:15, Class from 5:15-8pm W: Class 9-11:30 Thursday: Off-campus placement 8:30-12:30, class from 2-3:15 Friday: Class 10-11:30, clinic from 11:30-1:30 Honestly, many of your days are going to be long ones, despite a schedule that looks simple on paper. You're going to have a lot of work to do during your gaps, but it's manageable (most of the time, haha). Honestly, I get stressed, but I LOVE my program overall. You're immersed in speech-language pathology and it can definitely be exhausting, but it's also exciting! Just be sure to schedule in time for friends and family and non-school related things. I can't stress enough how important it is to stay balanced!

Honestly, if you can avoid working during graduate school, I would. School is going to take up A LOT of your time, and you will need free time to catch up on work as well as catch up on rest. There is a reason that most programs discourage students from working outside of the program. If at all possible, I recommend focusing on school now and worrying about the debt later. You don't want to burn yourself out or let your academics suffer.

Hi speechstudent, different programs are structured differently but I believe that as of right now, the majority of programs will give you background in both medical and educational SLP. Medical SLPs work in acute care, rehab centers, outpatient clinics, skilled nursing facilities, etc. Depending on your exact setting, your responsibilities will vary - for example, acute care will be more evaluation based while rehab, outpatient, and SNF will be more a combination of eval and treatment. Your client population in many of these places will mostly be those with stroke and TBI (aphasia, cog comm, dysarthria, etc).

I think the GRE may be one of the biggest scams in higher education, personally. I don't think that it has been shown to be predictive of anything other than how well you will do on the GRE. Predicting graduate school success based on factors such as one's knowledge of obscure vocabulary is asinine at best. I hope that the GRE will be phased out of graduate admissions someday, but it's a cash cow and I doubt it's going anywhere anytime soon. As psyprof said, it's a hoop that one must jump through to go to graduate school. That said, you should probably choose schools with GRE scores close to yours, not because you couldn't be successful elsewhere, but because you have a better chance of getting into those institutions.

SLP students do occasionally fail out of graduate school. I personally know of two who were asked to withdraw from their program due to grades. Faculty will certainly try to support you and help you through difficult times, but if you still aren't maintaining the required average GPA with their assistance, they will ask you to leave. I would say, however, that it's harder to fail out of graduate school in a way. Mostly due to the fact that there is such an inherent support system built into the program (relatively small cohort, professors and clinical faculty that you know you well) but it does happen.

Hi speechstudent, I am currently in my second semester of my master's. I can't speak to other programs necessarily, but I would say that most programs (or at least those programs worth their salt) will require you to "critically read and analyze" since this is a huge part of being a speech-language pathologist. You will not stop learning when you graduate and you will have to continue to critically read and analyze research articles in order to stay up to date and provide sound, evidence-based practice. As far as difficulty in comparison to undergrad....Graduate programs in SLP are demanding - there is no denying it. In my opinion, the most difficult thing is time management. Coursework is certainly more demanding and this is compounded by the fact that you will also probably be managing your clinical work on top of a full course load. This may vary by program since some programs don't start clinical until after you are done with the majority of your academics, but I think many programs are designed like mine where you start clinical right off the bat. I do believe that, in general, the undergraduate SLP major is relatively easy in comparison to the graduate work. This does not mean that you won't be successful in graduate school but it does mean that you will probably have to change the way you think and manage your time. Coursework will no longer be your only (or main) priority and you will have to shift away from simply memorizing everything to thinking analytically about things. This is the time when you start to apply what you have learned, which is a difficult transition sometimes. It's one thing to learn about dysphagia and another to actually use that knowledge perform a bedside swallow evaluation and make a recommendation. There is also the learning curve and stress that comes from adjusting to new environments such as hospitals and rehab facilities, which is something I didn't think about when I applied. What did you find challenging about your undergrad SLP courses?

Hi lululuna, Although there are many, many jobs in the school system for SLPs - there are still medical jobs available as well - especially if you are willing to be somewhat flexible in terms of type of setting (acute, rehab, outpatient, skilled nursing facility, etc) and location. You may wait a bit longer to be employed than education-track classmates, but that doesn't mean that you will never find a job. I am getting my education certification "just to be safe", but, like you, I am interested in the medical setting. What you see in these settings will vary greatly depending on where you are but as sayjo said, you will probably see more cog comm disorders, aphasia, dysphagia, AAC, voice, motor speech disorders, etc in the medical setting than speech sound disorders. Again, I'm not trying to sway you one way or the other, but I just don't want you to write off speech-language pathology because you think you will be stuck in a school doing artic day after day. That's certainly not the case. To answer your question, I took a year off. I ended up going back to the same university, but they wouldn't just let me transfer and I had to reapply, which was a bit annoying but ultimately a good thing since the year off gave me time to be sure of what I really wanted.

Hi Saila09, the program at the University of Connecticut heavily emphasizes EBP and all first years are required to take a research methods course. I wouldn't say that most/all of the students in the program do master's theses but it is strongly encouraged and there are several labs available for students to do their research in. I agree with the suggestion above, however, to look for programs that turn out a lot of research and have several active researchers in their faculty. I think most programs that are high to mid ranked schools will emphasize EBP (one would hope so anyway!).

I actually went the opposite way. I completed a year of my AuD before deciding it wasn't for me and making the switch to SLP. I have great respect for both fields, but was very unhappy as an AuD for a few reasons. For one, it's very "techie": It may seem obvious, but I think I failed to realize as an undergrad just how very technologically-based audiology is. I got caught up in the anatomy and physiology of the ear and the central auditory nervous system (I still love it, by the way! I think the ear is by far one of the most fascinating parts of the human body!). However, when I got into clinic I found actual process of audiological evaluation and hearing aid work to be tedious and boring. When you are working with hearing aids you will spend the majority of your day in front of a computer screen, which is fantastic for some people, but definitely not for me. I quickly got tired of algorithms and the process of troubleshooting hearing aids and fiddling around on computer programs. However, if you're a problem solver AND enjoy computers, it's a great career option. I also disliked the fact that I didn't really build relationships with my clients. They came in two or three times (eval, hearing aid fitting, follow up) and that was about it. I never saw them again (or at least for another year - hardly enough to build a relationship). I realized after my first semester that a relationship with my clients was important to me and I wanted more opportunities to act in a therapeutic role other than just prescribing hearing aids. Even therapy for children with CIs and HAs, which interested me, is typically done by SLPs. I was also troubled by the fact that audiologists are frequently treated like technicians by doctors both within hospitals and private practices. Obviously it's not like this everywhere, but it happens often enough that it gave me pause. Although you can work in various settings and with various age groups, your work is ultimately the same - evaluations, hearing aids and possibly the occasional central auditory processing eval (depending on where you are), or vestibular (again, depending on where you are). Which is fine, of course, if you enjoy all of those things. Unfortunatley, I just didn't. Also, this sounds kind of silly, but being in windowless, sound-treated rooms all of the time made me absolutely crazy! I could not have forseen how much that would bother me! Haha. Although it wasn't really a factor for me, SLP generally pays better. Jobs are also generally more available. I also liked the wide variety of career options I would have with a master's in SLP - anything from literacy to articulation to voice to fluency to dysphagia to cognitive to AAC and beyond. I am still feeling out exactly what I want to specialize in, but I really appreciate having so many options. In defense of audiology, it is generally a lower-stress job than SLP and is still very rewarding, especially when patients actually notice significant functional gains from their hearing aids. Even though audiologists can't technically diagnose things like middle ear infections or an acoustic neuroma, etc., the diagnostic process can still be fun and engaging. I also sometimes still miss the quiet of audiology! This is all obviously based on my personality and experience, but I hope that you can apply it to yourself in someway. Whichever way you decide to go, you will be picking a meaningful, interesting career with a positive job outlook. You really can't go wrong. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask me.

Yes, many of the clinical track students at UConn also do some sort of research although I don't believe that it is actually required for speech.

As someone who got totally burnt out by grad school straight out of undergrad - I'd say take a break. The next 5 years will afford many opportunities for research but not so many opportunities for pure, unadulterated time off, so take it while you can get it.

Hi, I'm very familiar with the program at UConn and will be attending there in the fall. Yes, they put you into clinic right away, which I personally think is a good thing but that's just personal preference. I thought this was a common thing for speech programs, but apparently not. If you have specific questions about the program I'm happy to try to answer them. I did my undergrad there and have lived in the area for essentially my entire life so I should be able to help you.

Just accepted my offer from the University of Connecticut.

I was dealing with the same thing. I just accepted my admission at my local university where I did my undergrad. It's a great program but I really wanted to go elsewhere and experience something new. That said, I couldn't justify the cost. There was one program in particular that I was really excited about but it would have been more than 2 times the cost of my in state university. Also, unless you plan to go on for a phd, I don't think that a slightly higher ranked program is really going to make a difference in your job opportunities. Long story short, I want to be able to take the jobs I want, not just the jobs that pay more. In order to have that freedom, I need to keep my loans down. Also, I very very much want to move to a different part of the country but I figure I can do that upon graduation/during my CFY. It's a personal choice. I just personally wouldn't want huge student loans hanging over my head if I could at all avoid it.