Written by Rebecca Malcolm
Mid-2020: Moving back to Australia mid-pandemic…Well, trying to!
I was at a crossroads – should I continue teaching or shift professions to a better fit for this next phase of life? But what?
Providentially, I stumbled on an online forum where someone asked: “What career options are there for a (maybe) ex-teacher?”
I leant forward and scrolled through the suggestions:
- Reading specialist? Special needs teacher? Already in the back of my mind. 🤔
- ESL teacher? My pre-covid back-up plan – but now ESL students couldn’t get into to Australia! 😖
- Psychologist? Hmmm… 🤨
- Speech pathologist…
The world stopped. Speech pathologist.
An epiphany.
I sat back and thought – it was a great fit:
- Working with kids, helping people, watching when things suddenly ‘click’… my favourite parts of teaching!
- I love language, words and accents… I’ve lost more hours in a YouTube deep-dive about the different features of different accents than I care to admit. 🤓
- Medical things are weirdly interesting to me.
- I had seen how empathetic, understanding health professionals really, REALLY made a difference. I really care and I ‘get’ people.
Soon I was googling speechie courses. Charles Sturt Uni had an online Masters of Speech Pathology!
I applied.
Within weeks we managed to get flights back to Australia. I was working on online pre-requisite units from hotel quarantine.
September 2024: ¾ of the way to being a real speechie
I’m in my third year of part-time study, really enjoying learning (ok – maybe not when it’s exam time) and looking forward to graduating at the end of next year.
The staff and other students are a-maz-ing! Truly supportive. My fantastic study-friends are so generous in sharing resources, talking through assignments and being a cheer-squad when things are hard. The staff model being understanding and empathetic clinicians in how they teach us too.
I’ve learned that speech pathology is much broader than I realised. I understand why speechies tend to specialise once they graduate – because there’s SO much to learn that you can never cover it all.
It’s more medical than I expected – there’s more assessment and rehab for swallowing and feeding difficulties than I knew. I suspect that after I graduate, I will focus on children and families or speech and language across all ages – with an education background, it’s not surprising!
But it’s been SO interesting to learn about all the anatomy and underlying medical conditions. And it will still benefit me if I don’t work in hospitals – language and speech are more medical than I realised!
Placement was great – we all went in feeling really nervous and like complete imposters. But I walked out thinking “I can actually imagine doing this!”. The foundations from first year, the deeper understanding from second year, and the application from third year really have taught me to think like a speechie.
I’ve got the basic skills to branch out into whatever area I choose to work in. Now I can imagine being the empathetic, understanding speechie who helps someone who is struggling to have that moment where things ‘click’.
Charlie blog is a SSAF funded initiative
