Journey to Audiology

                AJ’s undergraduate major is in Communication Disorders at Brigham Young University.  There are two career options with this particular bachelor degree; a doctor of audiology, which requires 4 additional years of schooling, or a speech-language pathologist (SLP), which only requires 2.  AJ has a great interest in all aspects of language and that was his basis for choosing this as his major; to become a SLP and help people with language.  As he was taking his classes he was intrigued by the science behind language and its disorders.  He seemed to love it, but we later realized that he didn’t have a passion for it.

                What he did love though were his seminary teaching courses.  The whole reason that he wanted so badly to come to BYU- Provo was the seminary teaching courses.  AJ’s hopes were to become a seminary teacher and just have Speech-language pathology as a backup plan.  That was until he took his first hearing science course- AJ LOVED this class.  He would come home eager to tell me everything that he had learned that day, and his excitement only grew with each additional class.  He soon realized that his passion was audiology, not speech- language pathology, so our backup plan was changed to audiology.

"AJ, you WILL be an Audiologist!"

                Before his student teaching was even started, during the Priesthood session of general conference, that AJ felt he was meant to be an audiologist, not a seminary teacher.  At first he was extremely disappointed and didn’t want to accept it, but he soon began to be excited about audiology.  Not long after conference, AJ did his student teaching at a local high school and it was not everything he had hoped it would be.  He seemed a little downtrodden to me because he had been assigned an incredibly difficult and uncooperative class.   All he wished to do was help these students feel the Spirit, but it was a real struggle to just get through the lesson without multiple interruptions.  The fact that he received the prompting to go into audiology, before his student teaching, made it even harder for him to give an already difficult class his best.  He did, however, give it his all and had a good experience with the youth.

                So, becoming an SLP was out the window.  Seminary teaching was out the window.  It was time for us to switch gears, and get ready for graduate school.  Audiology here we come.