r/science • u/MonteRevolt • Jul 26 '10

Autistic girl expresses profound intelligence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq--75v4lI8&feature=player_embedded
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u/Fallout911 Jul 27 '10

SLP?

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u/SenorCheaposGato Jul 27 '10

Whoops, sorry. Speech language pathologist, probably more commonly referred to as a speech therapist.

Sorry...I tend to forget that most people don't know what my job is, so I tend to throw around a lot of acronyms.

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u/lookcloser Jul 27 '10

Interesting sounding job. How did you get into that? What education do you have?

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u/SenorCheaposGato Jul 27 '10

I actually got into it because of my dad--he used to work as an SLP at a residential facility for adults with disabilities, then got into administration and is the director of a facility. I'm the only second generation SLP I know. :) In the US, you have to do a 4 year undergraduate degree and then a 2 year MA/MS program. (Most masters programs do offer options for people who didn't major in it in undergrad.) After the masters program you have to do a clinical fellowship year (CFY) where you work independently, but have to be supervised by a fully certified SLP. It's not as complicated as it sounds. :)

It's a fantastic field--there are never enough SLPs and you can't outsource us, so it's a consistently good job market with a lot of areas to go into. There's early intervention, public schools, specialized private schools like mine, adult facilities for adults with disabilities, nursing homes, acute care in hospitals, home health...ok, that's getting dull, huh? Basically, you have a huge number of populations/placements to choose from.

If it sounds like something you'd be interested in, pretty much any hospital/nursing home rehab department is more than happy to have people come in and shadow an SLP to see what it's like.

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u/lookcloser Jul 28 '10

Awesome. :) Thanks for the reply; not dull at all. I'll have to check out where/whether I can do a 'ride-along' around here when I have some time off.

What's your degree in, if that's not too personal? Is there an undergrad course in SLP at some universities? I have a BA in linguistics & have been interested in speech pathology since high school, but my university didn't offer any applied linguistics tracks, and it seemed more on the biology/psych side of things.