What made me choose SLP?

Good question.  I intended to answer this question a while ago, but got side-tracked with life and my A&P series I've been all geeked-out over.  I'll go ahead and answer this question now.

About six months after the end of my voice therapy, my singing was coming along fairly well.  I began to toy with the idea of going back to school for a DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts for any non-musicians, or non-Americans out there).  I got myself a vocal coach and started planning my hours-worth of music I'd need for the auditions.  My brilliant idea, I decided, would be to go back for a pedagogy-intensive degree and to do a lot of research in voice science while I was there.  I was thinking of finding schools that would allow me to sort of build my own curriculum of speech pathology courses instead of vocal pedagogy courses so I could go into more detail and perhaps even do some research with speech paths. on the treatment of the professional voice.  

It seemed like a decent plan, but it came with some reservations on my part.  First:  I was not sure how viable this plan really was.  It seemed great in my head, but I wondered about the practicality of being interdisciplinary like that in a DMA program.  The other reservation I had was going back to music school at all.  I had never fared well at music schools.  I'm sure part of that was from the deadly combo of my paresis-inflicted voice and lack of confidence, but the dynamics and politics of most music schools always rubbed me the wrong way.  I'm a very straight-forward person, so trying to figure out how to "play the game" of "politeness above all else with some back-stabbing on the side" that seemed to be the MO of my previous music school experiences tended to make me very, very unhappy.   But, I thought maybe this time, it wouldn't be so bad since I'd have my fiance (now husband) with me for the ride this time.  Since he's very much not in the "musical world," I figured I'd have a great source of grounding waiting for me whenever I got home.  

So I went to a voice lesson with my plan in hand.  At the end of the lesson, I discussed my plan, my main objective, (the interdisciplinary research idea,) and I discussed both of my reservations with my teacher.  She was very patient listening to my whole plan, but at the end of everything she just simply said:  "Why don't you go back for a degree in speech pathology directly?"  I was a little stunned...mainly because I wondered why, with all of my planning and reasoning, did I not think of that?  She continued to tell me she thought I would make a great voice therapist, and I would be able to get a much more detailed grounding in voice science and therapy if I just get the actual degree and the actual license to practice.  I left saying, "I'll look into that."  

It was seriously not more than five minutes after leaving that lesson that my mind was set on getting the SLP degree.  I was so excited about the idea of going back for a degree that calmed both of my reservations about going back at all and provided even more science training than my original plan.  It was brilliant!  And, what's even better, it returned a fire to my belly that had been missing for some time.  I had a mission and a plan to complete it!  Very little in life feels as good as finding that plan, or path, after a few years of floundering.  

I immediately set aside the graduate school applications I had printed off of music schools' websites and looked up SLP programs in my area instead.  I bought a GRE study guide and signed myself up to take the test one month from when I bought the guide.  (Didn't do as well as I hoped, but fared pretty well for someone who hadn't touched algebra-level math for nearly 15 years.)  Everyone kept telling me I'd make such a great candidate that I did not anticipate not getting into the program that year, and so, of course, I didn't.  Not as a master's candidate like I had applied for.  I was bummed, but undeterred (thanks to the fire in my belly), so I called up the program that rejected me and asked what I could do to make myself a better candidate for next year.  They suggested an SLP "leveling" program, which allowed me to take the necessary junior and senior level undergraduate courses that I would have to take anyway before becoming a full-fledged master's candidate.  The leveling program also turned out to be far cheaper than taking the same leveling courses at the institution with the master's degree, so that actually turned out rather well.  

That is just one example of how this journey has been far less straight-forward than I originally thought it would be, as nearly every journey you ever take in life is.  But here's the big secret:  The path I'm currently on, although not very straight-forward, is turning out a whole lot better than the one I originally envisioned for myself.  Sounds pretty cliche, but that might be because it's the one thing in life you can always count on, inconsistency.  And when you get joy out of the turmoil of life's inconsistency, you just have to laugh at the genius of the whole thing.