My Story

I was a speech and language pathology major at Northwestern University in Evanston IL . I chose this field because I love people and I love talking to people and to help them communicate better. To gain experience, I volunteered my time during college at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC). The audiologist there had double degrees in both audiology and speech/language pathology. She told me that I didn’t want to be a speech pathologist, I was meant to be an audiologist. Consequently, I volunteered in the audiology department helping get the patients in the sound booth, giving them instructions and making them feel comfortable. The patients at RIC were all brain or spinal cord injured, so placing them at ease and ensuring they knew what to do was not always as simple as it sounds. I finished my major in speech and language pathology but took as many courses as I could in audiology during my undergraduate education.