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You can also follow them on Facebook and Instagram by searching Bookies Chicago. This podcast is being brought to you by WXA V 88.3 FM and WXA V dot com WXA V bringing the best podcast to you. Hi, this is Peter Creighton from WXA V 88.3 FM Chicago, your Escape from Ordinary Radio. And I'm really excited to launch this brand new podcast series where we're going to focus on specific departments here at St.
Xavier University. We're going to go over what they do, how they interact with the community, and if you're interested in the program, how you could get involved with it. And to kick off this new podcast series, we're welcoming some members from St. Xavier University's Communication Sciences and Disorder program.
And we have three students that are currently involved in the program. And we're going to talk a little bit about their experiences here at St. Xavier University. First, that means welcome Natalie.
Natalie, how are you today? Good, how are you doing? Well, we also have Julia. Hello.
And last but not least, we have Maddie. Hi. How's everything going? Ladies, good.
Good, good. How did you guys decide how did you discover this major and what made you want to become a major in Communication Sciences and Disorder? I mean, for me, I come from a long line of school workers, and I was introduced by my mom to the SLP she worked with at her school. And she actually described the field as the study of everything from the lungs up.
So everything that goes into verbal communication, like from the lungs to the vocal folds to the mouth, but also including the brain and its structures and how we form language. And so it can also incorporate like both verbal and nonverbal language, like sign or using alternative communication devices. But I discovered it through my mom and I was like, I can do that. And here we are.
So I actually found the field in a little bit of a different way. I came into college, not, I wasn't undecided. I started out as a psychology major, but I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with that. I knew I didn't want to go to med school, but I knew that I wanted to have a job that would be something that was not a teacher, essentially.
My mom's a teacher, my sister's a teacher, and I kind of thought that was a path. I was going to go. But I wanted to find something different. I just wanted something that was a little bit more specific, something that wasn't teaching.
I knew I didn't want to be in a classroom. So I'd actually had a girl in high school tell me about speech pathology. She ended up coming here as well. She just had kind of mentioned it and passing.
I had no idea what she was talking about. And when I got here, I took a few psychology classes, still had that I don't want to go to med school mentality and started to look around my sophomore year to change majors, but wasn't sure what I was going to do yet. And I had actually had, I was an athlete here. So I had a girl that I had known who was on the basketball team, who was two years older than me.
She was in the CSDI program, and she was telling me about it and what it was like, how she had to go to grad school, different things about it. And again, like, still didn't know anything, but I was like, that sounds like something that I could handle. It sounds like working in a school, but working with kids is like the initial kind of exposure I had to it. That's all I thought it was.
And I was like, I could do that. I think at the time when I switched, I didn't know what it all entailed, but I knew that the direction of it was something that I wanted to pursue. For me, well, I've always been the people person. I always knew that I wanted to work with people and help.
And there was seeds planted in my life for like that led me to speech looking back. The first one was my grandma had Parkinson's disease, and she had a home health person come. I think they were OT. I don't remember.
I was really small, but that was my first exposure to therapy. And then in high school, I was a peer tutor, they called them. And you're basically paired up with special needs kids and you help them during lunchtime and gym time. And that was my first real exposure to disability.
And I was like, there's something here that I really love. And I was exploring different fields that would work with people with disabilities. And I found out about speech and I fell in love with it. And yeah, now I'm here.
I love like the variety of stories that we have here. We have people influenced by family members, teammates on athletes and things like that. And it's just, it's really beautiful how each of you kind of found your path and everything. You mentioned CSD primarily being in schools and that is kind of like an age bracket that primarily you work with.
No, so speech takes over from birth to geriatric hospice, like still that's a life to that. So what did I do? Okay. I guess when I when I said that, I'm like, the father that I've gotten into it initially, I think most of us can agree that like your initial exposure was really how an SLP works in school.
And that's like what you first see. It's what you first hear of. It's like when you look it up on the internet, that's what first comes up. But the father that you go into it, you really start to see, you know, you get into the geriatric patients working with older people, you even get into you know, it's it's a big part of stroke recovery and which can happen to people at a very young age when you don't have to be old to have a stroke.
So it's definitely a wide range of people that you work with as well as you're not only a lot of people. When you tell them what what you're going into, they're like, Oh, you're going to be a speech teacher, which for some people, yeah, that is true. You're going to work in a school. You're going to be teaching children speech sounds, but it's way more than that.
You're teaching them social communication and you're teaching them how to do grammar and things like that just really getting into like all different parts of language, it's so much more vast than people realize I feel like. So but yeah, when you add the medical side of it, it really becomes this field that like is just so expansive like you it's really endless that the amount of things that you can do with it. And that's something that I think that a lot of people before they read that you get into it, it just becomes a positive that the more you learn about it, the more you understand what you can actually do with it. So that's what made speech so attractive to me is I'm a person who gets bored very easily.
I get bored so easily. And you can jump around in this field and work with any population. I thought I wanted to be a classroom teacher and I can't imagine myself being all day in one classroom. But when you're a speech pathologist, even in a school, you're jumping around.
You have a session for 30 minutes with a kid, you get a little break and then you jump. So if you have like problems, sing in one spot, you need to move your body, you can't see yourself in one setting for forever. I think speech is perfect for you. That's really interesting because the way the three of you are describing it is there's the physical aspect of teaching people how to make sounds again and how to communicate again.
But then there's that almost neuroscience aspect where you're working with the brain and you're re-teaching it. On the flip side, you're always moving, you're always engaging and you're using all the different skill sets that you've grown and developed. So it sounds like it's a pretty extensive major that you're all working in. Can you kind of maybe talk a little bit about the program and like classes that you take on a regular basis because everyone here is actually working on their master's program.
So Julia, can you be a speech path person and just get a bachelor's degree or do you need to immediately go and get a master's degree? To be a full-fledged SLP, you do need a master's. There are SLPAs. So they are people who just have an undergrad degree in speech pathology or communication and scientists disorders and they'll kind of work with SLPs.
Like the SLP will plan a session, create goals and then the SLPAs might implement it. But we are all in it. Natalie and I are second-year grad students and Maddie's inner first year. So we're all here to get our degree.
Neuroscience does play a big, big part in it. Virtually all of our classes delve into the parts of the brain associated with different functions of speech and language in one way or another and that's something that a lot of people don't realize or take for granted. It all comes back to the brain. I think people forget the pathology part in our major, speech pathology.
It's not just teaching. I also, as far as classes go, you take a multitude of classes that cover a lot of different things because communication is so large for lack of a better word. But there's so many different facets that you don't even really think about that we really have to delve into extensively because we that's what we do is like we need to be knowledgeable about all different forms of communications, not just about talking or like speaking. It's about using devices and sign language and all different kinds of things.
But you also get into like phonetics which is I feel like something most people haven't heard since second grade. But you learn all different kinds of things about the way that the words sound and you learn about dialects and all different kinds of things. So it really gets nitty-gritty. Yeah, you get into the really like the very smallest parts of language and you zoom out, you see it as like a person like how it looks in real life and then zoom back in to figure out how you can best help people with certain things.
So I would say classes in undergrad, they start with like an intro class to what communication disorders is and then you get like a language disorders class and then phonetics. So you have to learn the IPA alphabet and learn how to write and read in phonetics which is cool. It's like a secret language that we use and then yeah those are like the basics. You probably learn more about pediatrics in undergrad and then when you get into grad school it's very, you get an introduction in undergrad to neural but in grad school it's very neuro intensive I feel like.
You also take a speech sound which is probably something that Natalie was trying to blackout mentally because that was pretty tough class. It's very science based. Oh speech science. You do a lot of yes speech science is not you do a lab with it.
You're doing speech samples and that's like another thing you just don't really think that's something that you're going to be covering when you go into this major at first but it's while it's difficult it's so so interesting. I know when I took that class I was like the heart of covid I lived on campus so I was stuck in my dorm room for a month. Yeah, what felt like months but it was really cool because you'd I would lose my voice like at a game or something and then come home and have to do speech samples and my teacher would be like what like who took the speech sample because he could it's so funny because I couldn't tell that my voice sounded raspy just because I was so new to it and he was obviously like so knowledgeable about it he was like your speech sample sounds crazy so it's just it's kind of funny like once you really get into it the amount of knowledge that you know about the way that voice communication speech like everything works it's really it's really interesting. Something else I wanted to add is we kind of talked about how broad the field is and you know people will be like oh you teach kids to say there are and it's like well yes but there's also a million other things and we have what's interesting is that every person you meet in this program has a different interest or specialization that they want to focus on and something really cool about the program is we get to take classes that specialize in these things so for example over the summer we had our AAC course which is alternative which was a really really fascinating course about people who are primarily non vocal nonverbal who use devices to speak or we have a voice class which we can learn about just the voice just how you know we create sound.
There's another one I was thinking of counseling counseling yeah we have a counseling class because that's another aspect you don't think about is it's really hard like for people with these types of disorders or their families and their care caretakers to fully understand it so we take a counseling course to learn how to help these people through this process. Motor speech. Oh motor speech yeah so that's so that one's cool because we think that so the thing with motor speech disorders is that there's a disconnect somewhere in the neuron the neuro pathway that disrupts the coordination to articulate so it's not as simple as oh put your tongue here it's not that simple you kind of have to work around that disruption in that neuro pathway so it's really interesting. It sounds really interesting it sounds like it's really vast the different parts of the program only sounds like you can find your own like little niche to work in where it's like I want to work with autistic children becoming nonverbal to verbal or people recovering from strokes or things like that.
I kind of like to go around real quick and just kind of ask each of you what was the biggest thing that surprised you about this major when you first became a part of it. Natalie you're hanging immediately when I'm taking you want to go first. Oh my god okay so I hate math I went into this thinking oh speech pathology there's no math there is a ton of math in research methods you have to know how to read like a bell curve you have to know how to take an average your data it gets really nitty gritty and don't go into this thinking you're not gonna do any math because you will do a ton math. Okay but it's doable.
It's doable. It's not my favorite part about speech pathology but that's why I went with the other communication major here because there's no math in that. No there's so and then research gets so specific and if you're interested in research you're gonna have to do a lot of math. It is important though because this field is relatively new in comparison to a lot of you know health fields so there's a lot of research that still needs to be done and we take research really seriously when we're implementing practices and such so but it is.
Yeah. You have to talk to me. I'm happy about that. Well I love it because it sounds like Julia you're into the research.
Can I provide with the test? Julia is so smart and in research methods I was always lost and she always had something she's so articulate and she always just knew all the answers she's so good at math. Research not math. But it's just cool to see where everyone's strengths like I feel like I'm really good at neural that's like my thing I love neural and I feel like Julia can say the same but she's that's not her favorite thing.
So that's cool that like you don't have to be a master of everything in speech you can have your own thing. It's also like kind of with that it's a very collaborative field as well. Like you're always consistently working with other SLPs even if you're in a school and you're the only SLP in that school you're still like working with different colleagues throughout in a hospital you're working with other colleagues. My sister's a nurse and she works on a med search floor and tells me all the time about how she loves her her SLPs that come in and just kind of like tells me about what they do and it's just nice to hear from like someone else that doesn't do the job that doesn't even like understand fully what they do but still have appreciation for them it's nice to know like what kind of people you're working with that you're never gonna be just like solo on any one thing really you're always gonna have somebody to refer to you're always gonna have people to work with them like within our cohort I think that's a really nice thing and undergrad it's a little bit more competitive I think but you still build that there's definitely still that you know togetherness where everybody's confused about one thing while like one person gets it like maybe spread your spread the well like you know kind of spread the knowledge around but like once you go into grad school once you make it into a master's program I mean that really goes away I think that it's it's like a group effort all the time like these are your colleagues it's always what our professors tell us like you're not competing for anything anymore you're not competing for a spot in grad school you're you guys are like in this together everybody wants to graduate we all want to get through this like again like it's such an under-researched field there's such a need for people to be in this field it's got like a really high job yield as well which is great and so it's just it's all positive things as far as like togetherness community you're really like you have a good you know set of people around you I kind of touch on the competitiveness part because I know some people listening to this that are looking into speech might be scared away from competition especially undergrads really intense I wouldn't let that steer you away because your only competition is you I think helping out your classmates building that camaraderie isn't gonna push you back it can only move you forward in my opinion I think yeah I went to undergrad with Maddie and I feel like we got really lucky with our undergrad cohort we are very supportive it wasn't that stereotypical type of competitive cutthroat program that you usually hear about so if you're looking for something that's gonna support you and find I had a really good experience here at St.
Xavier I didn't feel that but I feel don't go in with that attitude of what the what the next person is doing or how the next person is doing better than you I feel like as long as you do your best and you are passionate about speech there's a place for you in speech yeah I totally agree I again like she said went to St. Xavier for undergrad and I never I didn't even really like understand that competition was like a part of undergrad mind you I was like an athlete for a lot of it so my mind was like literally in a billion places at once it felt like during undergrad so I you know would show up to class I would I would you know give my input where I thought I could I would do my assignments like I was just getting through grad school or through undergrad like because that's what I supposed to do I'm like I want to finish in four years that's my only goal I really don't like everybody come with me kind of thing you know I'm not I'm not I think it's kind of the culture that your cohort makes it yeah no I think I had a good group of people yeah and like since being in grad school telling people that I went here I have a lot of friends now that went to other schools and they're like my undergrad like cohort was crazy and nobody you know I needed help with the homework assignment and nobody would answer me and it's just it's definitely different other other places you're not gonna find somewhere like St. Xavier because a small school I mean I've only ever experienced a small school but a small school allows for a lot different I guess like camaraderie yeah so yeah I feel like you have more relationship with your professors and they just make a very supportive environment I had a really positive experience here in undergrad and that's why I came here for graduate school I just felt very supported and I didn't feel that cutthroat competition that you hear so much about you hear so many more stories and I don't want people to be steered away from the field because of that I feel like I said earlier if you are passionate about speech and you got the brains for it there's a there's a spot for you and I love it because you guys anticipated what my next question was going to be but would you say the benefits of coming here to St. Xavier was the fact that it was smaller class sizes being able to develop that personal relationship with your professors even with your fellow students and everything you felt supported you felt that you learned and would you say you got more hands-on experience than because of that I would say that there I mean I never went to a big school so I can't compare to anything else but I think that for the type of person I am the type of student that I am it was nothing but positive is coming here the environment that the program created teachers were always available like you knew your classmates were you weren't sitting in a giant lecture full of people I mean if you it's like you know you might not have known every single person in your class personally but you knew you know if you saw them you knew who they were and it was kind of like this thing where oh we're getting a good project like I know who the person I'm gonna be working with as you have like a little bit of relationship with pretty much every single person it's in it so it was it was like more comfortable I guess I would say I would say what's really cool about St.
Xavier's undergrad is that they throw you in to clinical experience pretty early your senior year you have an opportunity to do clinical practice come in it starts out with observations and then in the spring you get one client and so I came into grad school with 50 hours of therapy on her to four most people a lot of my classmates didn't have any therapy experience so I think that's an awesome advantage to come to stay next to a program that has an opportunity for you to do therapy in undergrad because a lot of graduate students when they got to the program they were panicking because they felt lost they didn't know where to start with therapy they didn't know what therapy really look like they just were in class reading textbooks but that hands-on experience you really get here at saying I guess my experience is a little different because I went somewhere else for undergrad I would talk to college but one thing I wanted to touch on is I know so many people from my undergrad who are maybe like a year younger than me who have reached out to me and they're like I'm so stressed for grad school especially in the application process like I'm so scared that I'm not gonna get anywhere like this is so stressful and it is it's kind of like one of the I mean Natalie and I were just talking about how that's like one of the most stressful parts of school stressful yeah I applied to 12 school I applied to two because I had about $200 in my pinky cat yeah I applied to nine so I'm not about my application I did not have any I was like I'm hoping a prayer trying to get into grad school that's literally only reason I applied to as many places as I did but it was it was tough for sure it's a lung lung process but if it's so worth it like once you get that first acceptance letter oh my gosh when you get your first acceptance you feel like finally you can breathe yeah but something they always and it's so corny but I hear everywhere on Instagram here at school remember your why why you're here why you're working so hard I feel like I always thought back to that person that was like just so stressed I actually took a gap year so I was working as a substitute teacher and doing my applications at the same time so all my sub money was going to that honestly but I think about like that person just sitting in my room at my computer writing my personal statements and I really put everything out there I just was so honest about my struggles through grad school about how things had gone for me it wasn't an easy road I had just like a lot of things going on with COVID and being like playing a sport and just there was just so much so I feel like I have so much appreciation for saying Xavier because I feel like when I wrote my personal statement I feel like they read it I feel like they cared I feel like they wanted to understand like why my transcript looked the way that it did why my GPA looked the way that it did and that's another thing and I think it's just so positive about this program like they really it's like they take it down to the person you're not just a you're not just another you're not a number yeah yeah and what I love about Maddie's story about my story is that we didn't take a traditional route and I feel like some people are just feel so pressured to graduate at the same time as other friends and I went to community college it took me three years to finish there so I graduated college in five years Maddie took a gap year so I think your journey is your journey don't really focus on what other people are doing and if you get a bad grade and something as long as it's not like a core class in the major don't freak out I see so many people freaking out because they got a C in a math class obviously get good grades but don't beat yourself up over yeah Chinese stakes any of you do make a mistake like it's like a ball you can take it at the end of the day like I applied to 12 schools because I didn't think I was gonna get into any which I don't know why I was like whatever and I got into half of them so at the end of the day like the point is don't be discouraged like there is a place for you in this field because it's a really important field and people realize how important and needed it is and you'll find your way well I mean I hate to do this but I only have one final question for your ladies and I want to go around the table and have each of you answer it and everything and that is at some point someone's gonna be listening to this podcast and they may be interested in this major but that first step as you guys have mentioned that's a serious one to do what advice would you give to a person who's thinking about going into this major and Natalie yeah I'm gonna start with you I would say in mind the commitment that this is because you can't do much with an undergraduate degree in communication sciences and disorders you have to get a master's to be a speech pathologist you can be an SLPA with a community college degree but it's a lot harder to go that route so I would not to discourage anyone but to be prepared for that commitment it is a six-year commitment so you're not gonna have a life your friends are gonna graduate there for your college they're gonna start their jobs making 90k a year 100k a year straight out of business school buying the car you're gonna be maybe living at home with your parents driving an old car not working living off of ramen noodles it's a it's the sacrifice so just remember that sacrifice but it's really worth it and so there's a lot there's a lot that makes it really worth it the time that you get back it's you do like it pays dividends and not even the money like I had a placement out of school and right now I have all stroke clients I'm so happy when I come out of therapy I feel like my cup is full after being with my clients it just makes my whole life like with being with the little babies with the older people it just gives you so much perspective in life it keeps you grounded I feel like if this is what you're meant to do you're gonna get through it oh I wanted to say something about grad school don't be discouraged if you get denied I feel like a lot of it there's a lot of overqualified students applying to really small programs at some point it turns into a lottery system so you getting denied doesn't speak about you if you look at your transcript and you have straight days and you have experience you getting denied from a grad school doesn't define you I feel like just try again if this is really what you want you're gonna make it yeah I was trying away from a small school either if it's accredited apply I mean like here a lot of people I know they went to big schools for undergrad and decided to take a chance on here they had no idea what it was about and they like it so I will say the same thing everything is regulated by ASHA all the classes are regulated by ASHA so any education that you get anywhere that's accredited it's the same thing so this school this medical school has a speech path program that's charging you 120 k a year is the same as same behavior that your degree is gonna cost half that so remember that yeah and that's all I have to say and what is ASHA Natalie oh my gosh I'm gonna stand for American speech and hearing association I should know that my heart okay I think I'm doing Julia picking up the spare right there thank you very much okay what advice would I give so there's a couple things you need to know like Natalie said it is a big commitment and I personally and we all personally find it easy to have that passion for it because I think we all came into this field because it's helping field and it's so so rewarding to work with these clients it's it's good to be a people person yeah it's good to want to enjoy you know talking with people like being a welcoming presence and it's a lot of work like I'm not gonna lie it is but it's the reason it's a lot of work is because it's it's important to put that passion in that time into it because we want people in this field who are super super passionate and committed and love what they do and love the people they work with and that's why we like it and that's why we want to pursue it for our careers but also you know like we've been saying don't be discouraged by things you see online you know or people talking about this field like oh it's so hard to get into grad school it's so hard to like focus on all these classes because it's so doable like yeah I was never like I was never a great student growing up and then as soon as I got into this major in college I was like whipped into shape it was like you like passion table passion takes you so far I feel like you have to be passionate about this because it is hard work if you're not passionate about this field you're gonna be grinding and then you're gonna be like for what for me what got me through was a passion that I have for this and if I feel like if my high school teachers saw me in a master's program to be like who what who did that so yeah you know if you're passionate about this it will it will get you through and like we said there's a there's a niche for everyone like if you like working with kids you like working with adults if you like working with people with intellectual disabilities if you like working with swallowing swallowing the classic oh my gosh yes oh yeah we didn't talk about swallowing oh my goodness yeah we also work with people with a dysphagia who yeah you know can't swallow properly it's something I did not expect very much coming to this field but there's always something for you if you want to work in a hospital if you want to work in a school like and the other great thing is you can change your career path at any time in your career because after getting this degree you are qualified for all of it like it's good to get continuing education but there's so many options out there for you if you get bored in a certain part of the field guess what you can change it it's like there's so many options also like we said job retention is very good because I am five months out from graduation I have like about three people reaching out to me yeah for a job yeah it's crazy they even had like you've been reaching out to sx you saying one of your students graduating like we were trying to hire so and I also want to say for my Latinx community people that or just bilingual people in general there's so much opportunity for you I have so much opportunity just because I speak fluent Spanish so and there's a lot of money there so if you are a bilingual person or a trilingual or whatever there's a lot of opportunity for you I would say and we have to diversify the field like what it's like 90% of its white women or something yeah yeah so we got to get more people in here it's so important my word of advice would be it only takes one it literally only takes one school to believe in you to get into grad school to start your journey to be an SLP again it's so worth it like Natalie was saying it's hard work but it's so worth it once you get out getting a job all that it's nice to have that job security obviously but it's very fulfilling work and my other word of advice would be if you are not type A you 100% can still do this job yes yes yeah I'm a type B person to my core we're all type you like super chill go the flow I am I'm very type B and I remember being undergrained a lot of the teachers were type A just because they're teachers and that just kind of comes with the territory a little bit as professor and they were like there's so many type A people in this field it's all type A type A type A everywhere and I just was like what am I type A like is that a bit that doesn't mean that you're not passionate you just don't freak out over yeah things so you can be type B and productive and still you know get everything done that you need to and be a very successful SLP in in today's world it's so possible so doable so I think that that's a big stigma around it that people try to it's only type A and you should you should be a certain type of person and this but it's it's so it's so vast that there's so many different types of people that can do it you don't just have to be one thing you don't just have to be a certain way in school yes you have to get good grades but if you have the will to get good grades like just to do the work even if it doesn't come naturally to you can succeed in this field it's all about your passion like Natalie was saying it's it's all about your drive to get to where you're going and honestly to me your journey doesn't matter as much as like once you get to your end goal and that's all that matters so basically you can be who you are and there's a place for you in speech I feel like sometimes for me being work for my background like the first thing I'm very typey you go with the flow so it's really hard when you're in a cohort of people who are a lot of them are type but you feel like you don't fit in or that you're not working hard enough yeah that's because you're a chill person yeah you feel like you're not working as hard as everybody but guess what you're not you're not freaking out about some tests but you're still doing just as much you're just not but I'm here with them I'm here with them and also just because you look different I mean I look different like I'm not I have a different experience I don't want that to discourage anyone there's a space for you and we need you and there's so much need that we need all different personalities and backgrounds and different types of people I also think sorry just really quick but the time commitment that speech pathology takes or I'm sorry speech language pathology takes in undergrad and graduate school just wanted to touch on this because I do have a different experience in these two being an athlete you can be an athlete and do both again like it's all about drive you can take the you can work that 40 hour week and quote 40 hours to be an athlete as well as being a full-time student it can be done so you know if you are if you are like going into college and you're trying to be a student athlete you don't have to cross this field off of your list because you think it's too much time commitment like again like if you want it you just have to go get it yeah well you had your softball I had two three jobs at a time and I'm still here it's all about if you're willing to do it if this is your dream if you know this is what you're meant to do don't let anything stop you and I know it sounds cheesy but it's so true because we're always standing here right now and like also I just wanted to add on like with the type of thing like I was not a math person I was not a science person I was not anything like that growing up I was an art and music it like I thought I was gonna go to music school or art school or something like that and I realized that those skills and talents that I have can be applied so well to this field because it's all about flexible thinking coming up with new ideas you know planning for things and like putting passion into it you know especially like when I work with kids like I love setting up for my sessions and thinking of and problem-solving and thinking of new ways to approach things because every client is so different it's like if you are not a science person that's okay yes you're gonna have to do science stuff but yeah but you can use your skills your skills yeah this the skills that you may not think won't get the skills you think won't come in handy they will yeah they are so valuable in this field and everything builds on each other yes and your personality your clients that's what they're gonna see they're gonna see you the person not everything that you studied they don't know that like they know the person that's in front of them and you need to be yourself that's who they connect with and personally like I think my clients love me I love my clients so I think keeping your individuality being who you are not thinking that you have to change is so important because people will appreciate that from you ladies thank you so much for joining me today on this inaugural podcast where we learned a lot about communication sciences and disorder I'd like to thank Natalie Julia and Maddie for joining me today and thank you for listening Peter Creighton and cheers thank you very much for listening to this WXAV 88.3 FM podcast be sure to visit our website WXAV.com for more information on your escape from ordinary radio