3.5 Any recommendations for others interested in becoming an SLP?

For anyone potentially interested in following in Devin’s footsteps, it’s important to consider who can be a speech language pathologist and what is necessary to succeed. This is why I asked Devin to provide readers with some helpful tips on how to get started and how to get ahead in his line of work.

Transcript: “Yeah, so I think anybody can be an SLP. There’s kind of been this idea that you have to be very extroverted, you have to be super bubbly, and I’m definitely not. I’m a very Type A person, I’m not even great at small talk or, you know, communicating in general, I wouldn’t say, but that doesn’t matter, because anybody can be an SLP if they’re committed to, if they’re passionate about the work. Uh, I got into this field kind of in an unexpected way. I fell in love with linguistics. I, of course, majored in Spanish and then got a little taste of linguistics there, and just interested in communication in general, how things are produced, how we communicate, and from there I fell in love, too, with, or I became interested in, really, what can happen when those things are gone, or when, you know, there’s problems with that–it’s so fascinating the way all of that works. And so, um, for students who feel the same, or are interested in, you know, not just understanding how these things are produced but being able to help people who have lost that, you can always go into SLP. You can go in with any Bachelors degree and pursue your graduate program because it is a Masters, and obviously I didn’t have a Bachelors in Communication Disorders, but I was able to catch up just fine and, and, um, I would say even my Spanish degree has helped me more than a lot of my peers who majored in other things.”

Those interested in speech-language pathology may consider a Bachelors degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders, but this is not required. While it may give some foundation that can help once starting graduate school, the truth is, people enter the SLP graduate program with all kinds of different academic backgrounds and it becomes a level playing field. It can be a good idea to look at different graduate programs for speech-language pathology and do some research on what their focus is, or what they’re known for. Consider what kind of specialty you may want to go into—although it’s completely okay to not know just yet, and there’s a good chance you’ll change your mind at least once before graduating! Devin knew he wanted to be a medical SLP, so he went into a program with a medical focus. Some programs are more general, some more specialized. There are also graduate programs that get a strong influx of students interested in a specialty because of a certain professor; some programs do have professors that are renowned experts in specific specialties, which is something to consider when choosing your program.