I hate my grad program!

[brickabee]

I worked very hard to get into a grad program for speech-language pathology, and I was ecstatic when I was accepted into Murray State University's program for Fall 2016. They chose 32 people total, many from other institutions. I was very happy to get in, and it was my top choice. I now regret going here. I absolutely hate it. It's not the homework, the papers, or our clinic clients that have wore me down. Rather, it's my professors and clinical supervisors! They have absolutely made me hate everything about this program. I realize that the point of the program is to make us the best clinicians we can possibly be, but they are constantly nitpicking at each and every small thing. It is excessive. One of my clinic supervisors even told me that she and the client's caregiver would mock me from behind the glass in the clinic room where I couldn't see them. They threw us into clinic with no training and barely any information, so we were grossly unprepared. We didn't get training on Talktrac (where we keep all our clinic files), we were basically told to figure it out for ourselves. Then, we would get lectured if we did something incorrectly as if we were to know better. We were supposed to get feedback after every SOAP note or lesson plan we submitted so we could adjust it if it needed work, but our clinic supervisors were so disorganized, they didn't keep up with it. Weeks would go by without any feedback for Talktrac, and then all of the sudden we would get bombarded with several revisions at once. By this time, it was hard to remember what had even happen in a session 6 weeks prior. We were constantly lectured about "professionalism" and whatnot. Nothing is ever good enough. If you yawn in class, you will be called out. If they feel like you don't smile enough, you will be told you have an attitude problem. They analyze your face more than your actual clinic skills. The graduate professors are incredibly disorganized, and many of them act like they don't give a care if you learn or not. One of our finals was not even graded because she just didn't care to grade it. They are the least organized and least professional group of professors I have ever seen. And they are very rude. Many of us have said we have never been talked to by a professor the way these people speak to us.  Also, this program has two cohorts per year. So one starts in the summer and one starts in the fall. There are about 16 per cohort. This causes SO many problems because, inevitably, one cohort ends up being the "favorite" of all the professors, and the other one gets treated like the step-child. It is incredibly obvious, and it is very disheartening. Do NOT come to this grad school. You do get a lot of experience clinic-wise, but you have to put up with so much bs it makes it not even worth it. Stay away!!!!

[thespeechblog.com]

Sorry to hear you're having such a rough time! I wish I had some good advice. Do you think there is anyone in the program who you feel close with who you could talk with? Working in a toxic environment like that is the worst. I had that during undergrad (different field), and one of the big reasons I picked UNM was precisely because of how welcoming and cohesive the faculty seemed (in case you're looking to transfer ).

What about other students? Is there someone from another cohort that you could talk with? I've found people in my program love sharing advice with us newbies. Maybe even a recent graduate of the program could speak with you.

[CBG321]

I would report this to ASHA this exactly why they exist and if nobody speaks up they will continue this awful treatment unchecked.  Them not correctly teaching you the case system in the computer is a violation of HIPPA already!   So sorry about your experience what a horrible environment!

[ImHis]

Your faculty is violating ASHA Code of Ethics under Supportive Personnel and Certificate holders supervising them:

http://www.asha.org/Practice/ethics/Speech-Language-Pathology-Assistants/

I agree with CBG, REPORT them to the CAA immediately so they can investigate and put them on a remedial plan:

http://caa.asha.org