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WORKING WITH AUTISTIC CHILDREN. SLP Graduate Program Essay! [11]
Merged:SLP Graduate School Essay!
Hello! This is the prompt:
Why are you interested in pursuing graduate education in speech-language pathology? Please be specific and describe how your personal experiences, education, background, and interests have influenced your choice to enter SLP and to become a successful professional. What are your long-range goals as a future SLP?
In the BLANK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL, we value advocacy, collaboration, community, critical thinking, diversity, equality, integration, and justice. Please select one of these values and discuss what it means to you and how you plan to continue to embody this value throughout your professional career in SLP.Is it clear I picked advocacy? How could I make it more clear? What needs work? Thank you in advance! :)
The responsibility I feel to be advocate for the children I work with does not end when I go home. It doesn't end when I am in public or talking to other people outside of my field. Autism Spectrum Disorder and the people it affects are highly misunderstood. It is my job to help disseminate information to help more people understand.
I felt the same responsibility when I was doing my undergraduate degree. Along with two others, I helped developed a branch of the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI on my university's campus. Our team had all either experienced first-hand what mental illness was like or we had a friend or family member who was a survivor. We fought the stigma using our resources. We set up booths, we invited students to come listen to survivors, and we became involved with local support groups. We were advocates for ourselves and others who are so closely affected by mental illness. It was school that translated my curiosity into a passion for learning, but it was the people I met along the way that inspired me. Science was not just something to learn and read about, it was to be translated into advocacy and passion for helping people.
I found speech-language pathology while I was a neuroscience student. I was intrigued and did my own further research. It clicked; it fit together all the pieces of science I loved. The communication issues associated with neurological disorders were what interested me in neuroscience in the first place. Developing language and then using motor regions to plan it out and actually produce that thought to share with others fascinated me. Helping patients gain back or develop their own voice, their way of communicating was not a career I had previously known about. It tied together all that I felt I wanted in a career: advocacy, community, passion, critical thinking, and collaboration.
The field I currently work in I found after college. I discovered the ABA field while searching for speech-language pathologists to shadow. Instead of shadowing, I found myself working alongside them in a pediatric clinic for children with ASD diagnoses. The children I work with range in age from three to nine, and range in types and severity of symptoms. Some simply require the prompting of functional communication. Others are not vocal and use alternative voices from LAMP devices to PECS boards.
In my job, I've been asked to consider aspects of my future career I have never had to tackle before. I sometimes am the child's voice, sometimes I am the advocate for the family of the child. And when you stick up for the interests and dignity of your patient, amazing outcomes begin to happen. We have a child whose family was able to get a family photo for the first time in 5 years. We have a kid who felt proud of herself when trying three new foods and wanted to share that excitement with her peers and therapists for the first time. She wanted others to know she was doing a good job. I almost lost my voice from excitement that day. These little signs of progress, these little behaviors that children begin to participate in when their therapy is going well and working--these are the things we are working for. These moments that remind us why we are doing our jobs, why we are working so hard to improve these children's' and their families' lives. And this communication aspect of it, the speech pathology part of the holistic therapy is where my interests most lie.
The BLANK UNIVERSITY aligns with my goals and interests. Based on my background, I enjoy that the program is very research-focused and even studies ASD. The clinic I work with now has speech therapy, occupational therapy, and physical therapy on top of ABA therapy. I really enjoy the collaboration of the fields to aid in the overall therapy of the patient. I am a hardworking, passionate student who wants to make a direct difference in people's lives. I have a lot to learn to achieve my goals, and I want to get started.
