This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at New Paltz chapter.
People attend SUNY New Paltz to pursue all different majors. Some of our friends are public relations majors, others are education, some are business—the list goes on. Then, there’s that one major that half the girls at New Paltz are, and a very select amount of guys (props): Communication Disorders. Half the time people think we’re just regular Communications majors, and half the time people have no idea what we do with our major.
I’m a junior at SUNY New Paltz heading into my senior year. I’m a Communication Disorders major with a minor in Deaf Studies. My field molds people into being speech-language pathologists. Our job is awesome, and there are so many things to do with this career, so many places to work, and so many opportunities that come with being an SLP. We work with babies, children and adults with a variety of conditions—from Autism to Articulation Disorders to Apraxia to Aphasia—and we help give these people a voice.
As awesome as our job is, it takes a lot of work to get there. We need our Master’s just to get a job, and getting into Grad school anywhere is basically as competitive as trying to get a parking spot for your Tuesday 9:30 class. It’s tough, but it’s well worth the struggle.
So if you have a friend in the major, here’s some things that you don’t know, that you thought you knew, and that you should know about us:
1. Don’t get confused when you see us writing things in weird symbols—the phonetic alphabet is basically our first language.
2. If you ever need a library buddy, we will always be there, so hit us up.
3. We always make weird jokes revolving around our major that literally no one gets, but it’s all good.
4. If you ever need a good gift for us, Peachie Speechie is where it’s at.
5. ASL is our little way of having private conversations.
6. If you hear us mention NSSLHA, that’s the name of our on-campus group, not NASA (what my boyfriend thought it was the first time I mentioned it)
7. Anatomy…just anatomy (warning: crying occurs)
8. We will say we hate our major about 10 times a day, then say we love it. We can’t make up our minds—but we really love it.
9. ASHA is basically the Beyonce of speech-pathology, so if you see us freaking out during registration, it’s probably because there’s some new requirement we just found out we need a semester before graduating (warning: meltdowns will take place)
10. If you call something or someone the “R” word, we will stop being your friend until you apologize.
11. We don’t have high GPAs just because we want to, it’s because we need to. To get into Grad school, we are dealing with an average acceptance rate of about 5% (thats 25 seats/program), we don’t really have time to mess around.
12. That being said, if we get below a B+ in a class, we basically give up and decide we’re dropping out of college forever.
13. We have to take a test called the GRE to get into Grad school, and we are basically giving up every second of our summer to study and prepare for it. So when you call us asking to go out on a summer night, it’s not you—it’s the GRE.
14. If you see us walking around in business clothes and a name tag, we just came from our favorite place, clinic.
15. Even when we’re out of the clinic, we tend to correct our friends and family on their speech—it’s what we do.
16. If you see us crying it’s probably the fourth time we cried that day, especially if it’s around the time Grad school applications are due.
17. We’re usually on campus from morning until night, so our bed is basically our best friend.
18. We don’t just, “make people talk,” theres SO much more we can do with our degree (like feeding & swallowing, voice therapy for transgender clients, etc.)
19. Nothing makes us feel better than putting our knowledge to work and realizing the difference we are capable of making in the world.
20. As hard as our field is, we love what we do, and we wouldn’t want it any other way.
