"Now tell me that in a good sentence....."

....I say, attempting to get one of my clients to communicate non-telegraphically or with good grammar. One little guy knows the cues I give him so well that I only need to look at him skeptically for him to realize he needs to fix his sentence.

Another little guy will randomly hop up on my lap while I'm trying to get him to produce "baba" or "teetee."

There's the girl who told me a story that helped me figure out why her impairments are the way they are...and she's moved on to talking about why it is the teachers perceive her as antisocial with her peers, when I think she's one of the sweetest girls ever.

And the boy who's motivated by getting a hug every time he gets an answer correct.

And the girl whose way of communicating "yes" is to suddenly light up with the hugest, cutest smile.

And the rowdy boys who have the craziest, funniest facial expressions in the world.

And the adorable little girl who looked absolutely horrified when, concentrating on her "sh" sound, she very determinedly said "sh - SHIT!" instead of "shirt."

I LOVE MY JOB. :-D :-D :-D

How could you not love a job during which you're talking to a kid and after you say "Wow, you're lucky, I didn't get an iPod for my birthday when I was your age!" they say "Well....that's because the iPod wasn't really invented in YOUR time." :-D

Seriously...getting up at 7 still feels early to me. (Which is surprising, because as you just read, I'm SO incredibly OLD! ;-) But I don't really care because the kids, the school, the people are all awesome and I really, really do love my job.

I've even found a new possible area of interest for my PhD if I do end up getting it: word-finding deficits in children. My hopefully-future-mentor at UI deals with this, and I have a client who displays this and a myriad of other impairments...she fascinated me, she continues to do so, and through that I've found that the area itself is really intriguing to me. :) I'm so excited to learn more!

I've started throwing applications out into the wild blue yonder of speech path employers, too. That is kind of scary - sometimes I feel I'm not quite adult enough to BE an adult yet and to have a job and be off on my own. I've been a student all my life, and this change will be - strange, although expected and normal. :) And others have done it before me, survived even ---- so, then, shall I. Change has just always been, for me, exciting but also quite scary at the same time.

Anyone have any stories to share with me about finally making the break with the world of academia for good? Was it seriously odd for a while? Did you feel up to the job expectations? Was it a welcome, unwelcome, or just different change after everything was said and done?

I'm really excited - Michael and I will be heading out to Washington, DC in April, so I'll get to see Nate (hopefully, if he's free!) and meet Michael's friend from undergrad and see where he went to school and have some new memories of DC as opposed to those weird hormonal-and-cranky-eighth-grade-girls-on-a-bus-at-6-am ones, hurray! lol I'll also be going out to Iowa again in the summer and to New Jersey in late July for the Moebius Syndrome Conference.

There's also a Lifehouse concert the weekend of Easter, on that Friday! That's right before my birthday - and that's another thing I'm super-excited about. In my book, there is seriously no better concert than Lifehouse, lol, and I hope they come to Ann Arbor Borders too. My internship will end right after the Easter break, on April 1, and I know I'll really miss the kids.

But I'll have to buckle down and get other parts of life going - cuz I'll take the Praxis test, which is the qualifying test to be an SLP, on April 26! Eek. I hope that goes well! I know I need to study voice and anatomy more especially. Ask me anything about the cranial nerves, please, please - but do NOT try to get me to regurgitate what the cricothyroid muscle does. At least not right now. I vow to be golden on all that come late April.

Heading to the Gandy Dancer tonight for dinner with Michael - oh my goodness, I don't think I've been there since high school. Should be fun...can't wait to see Michael, as it's been like five days and that is a long time for us :-P lol Am very excited that he's definitely coming to visit me on Valentine's Day this year! Last year was our first Valentine's Day, but there was an evil snowstorm and he had a meeting anyway and it was just a non-convenient day...this one, though, is a for-sure and we have dinner reservations at a cute nice restaurant we haven't been to and I was just online-shopping for presents for him and I'm all happy. :)


Gotta run, but hope all is well with everyone :) Bye!