A MAJOR Change!

I changed my major for NAU and yes, the title was definitely a pun. As of a couple days ago, I am a Communication Sciences and Disorders major with a double minor in Photography and Psychology. I honestly can't wait to get back to NAU and get started on my classes! It's really crazy to me that I got all the way here from Nursing.

My entire life I wanted to be a nurse. There was a short time when I was younger where I wanted to be a ballerina and I wrestled with the idea of teaching a little bit, but even with those ideas in my head I always had the goal of being a nurse. I have always loved hospitals and I still would really like to work in one some day. My mom was constantly in and out of the hospital as I was growing up and, it might sound weird, but they have always kind of felt like home to me. The cafeteria food is BOMB, there is always the faint smell of hand sanitizer, you get to meet so many new people, the beds are really comfy (I'm pretty sure I'm the only person to have ever thought that), there's really no downside to hospitals unless you're the patient. I have always had a passion for helping people and I figured this was the best way for me to do it. Because I was with my mom in the hospital so much I got to meet so many nurses and I learned at a very young age how hard they really work. I wanted to grow up to be a hard worker and I loved the idea of having a busy job. I really had no complaints about the profession. However, it was a very rare thing for my mom to get a nurse that she actually liked as most of her nurses were very rude to her and I hated the way that made my mom feel. I wanted to be that nurse that all the patients loved and wear fun strawberry shortcake or Disney scrubs (I wanted to work in pediatrics, I'm not crazy I swear) so I would never make my patients feel the way that my mom felt.

In eighth grade, we had career day and that's when it happened. They brought in a nurse to talk about her job and her duties and everything. From that day on, I wanted to become a nurse practitioner, work only night shifts, and eventually open my own practice. My parents constantly reinforced the idea of me becoming a nurse and always told me how proud they were of me for wanting to go into the medical field. Because of this, I never wanted to do anything else and I was so happy that they were so proud.

However, as time went on, I began to discover things that I really don't like about sick people. For example, GERMS and vomit. I do not do well with either of these things at all. I don't let people drink after me, I will NOT get the first lid off of the stack and I can't take the first straw (or the second one) out of the dispenser in case someone touched it, and don't even try to cough anywhere near me. So, still wanting to stick with that career path, I simply modified my plan in small ways. At first, I decided to work in a children's hospital because that would keep me away from a lot of the vomit aspect and what kind of germs can kids really get anyways? Then, I decided that kids still throw up every once in a while, and they can actually be exposed to all kinds of weird stuff that I didn't want to deal with. So, I changed to wanting to work in the NICU. Babies only spit up which is totally fine with me, and as far I could tell they wouldn't be catching or spreading any life-threatening things that they weren't born with and stuck with that. I kept that plan for a very long time. It got me all the way through high school and into my second semester of college just fine. Unfortunately, the thought began creeping up in my head that once I get into the nursing program people are going to want to practice on me with needles... Now that I was not okay with at all. I have absolutely no problem with putting needles in other people, but I do not want them anywhere near my skin for any reason. I wasn't going to give up that easy though; I was definitely not about to let myself change my whole life plan just because I didn't want some stupid needle in my arm.

I kept pushing through the insanely hard sciences classes, late-night labs, and my friends getting mad at me for not being able to do anything because I had so much homework all the time. I worked my butt off every second of freshman year. I was up until three or four in the morning doing homework and then I turned around and got up at about 8:00 every morning for classes. I worked harder than I had ever worked before, and I still got a C in my anatomy lecture, a C in my microbiology lecture, and a B in both of those labs second semester. I went to S.I. sessions, I went to all of the open labs, and I studied 24/7. It just wasn't enough and I was going to have to retake all of those classes and then I would have been way behind after that.

By this time, I was seriously considering changing my major. In the little amount of free time that I had, I would research other jobs that I could have and what degrees I would need, etc. Then I remembered that in high school I had thought very briefly about being a music therapist. I thought it sounded kind of dumb at first, but then a show that I used to watch actually had a music therapist as a character and I really started to like the idea. However, I never really looked into it because I was so set on becoming a nurse that I ignored the thought until my third semester of college. It was the only other thing that I had found even remotely interesting besides nursing. I looked into accounting, I looked into teaching, I thought about physical therapy, being a therapist, journalism, just about anything I could find really. I actually got really close to taking an intro to journalism class that semester, but it was already full. I looked into what seemed like every possible career path and none of it sounded good at all. So, I did a lot of research on music therapy. I got so far as pulling up the page to change my major on multiple occasions. My dad didn't like the idea of me being a music therapist and I didn't want to disappoint him, but I felt like this was my only option. I thought I was never going to find anything just as good as, if not better than, music therapy. I did more and more research about it, each minute falling more and more in love with the idea. And that's when my world shattered.

I had originally planned on changing my major to psychology, getting a bachelor's in that, and then getting a master's in music therapy because I thought that I saw that I could get into the program that way. However, when I went back to look at the requirements for grad school, I had to have had a bachelor's in music or music therapy in order to qualify. Sadly, NAU doesn't offer music therapy and I really did not want to transfer. I had a full tuition scholarship and the only in-state school that had a music therapy program I absolutely hate and it is way more expensive than NAU. My only option was to audition for the school of music. I had gone four years without playing my flute and was just barely getting back into playing it so that was a dead end and I can't sing so I couldn't get into the music program that way either. Devastated that I was never going to find anything for me, I went back to the drawing board. I had been told by more than a few people that I should do speech therapy but I had always thought that that was a dumb idea... I thought that speech therapists were weirdos who sat in schools and taught kids how to pronounce words correctly and I totally dismissed that option.

At this point I was dead set on the psychology thing. I was right on track for getting a psychology degree and there were a lot of options career-wise for me on that track. However, there wasn't much I could do with a bachelor's in psychology and I was worried about getting that degree and not being able to get myself through grad school in order to get a master's. Plus, at some point I would like to be able to not live at home and support myself, and psychology just wasn't the best option for me at the time. However, I kept that as my plan A until I found something else. I was really struggling finding something else. Soooooo, I did some research on speech-language pathology.

Despite actually looking into being an SLP, it really did not seem that great still. Aaaaaand then I took to YouTube. I found a channel called The Social Speechie and oh my gosh was I wrong about SLPs! I absolutely fell in love with the job. There's crafts, I can potentially be my own boss, I can work in a hospital, I get to work with all different kinds of people, I can incorporate music, I could do animal-assisted therapy, the list goes on.... This job combines the best things about every dream job I have ever had. When I had finally settled into this career path, I was sent straight back to the drawing board.

Just in case you don't know me too well or you're new here, things do NOT go very well for me. My life is never smooth sailing and there is always either a huge speed bump or a 600ft. cliff right around the corner. If you didn't already know where I was going with this, NAU did not offer a bachelor's in communication sciences and disorders (the major I would need) at any of their campuses. So, either I could just transfer, or I could stay on the psychology/nursing/research path I was already on. I did not want to give up that easy though. I had just found my dream career and I was not going to do anything that wasn't just as good, if not better. I kept searching for a solution to my problem. I found that NAU did offer an online certificate program for becoming an SLPA (speech-language pathologist assistant) but I do not do well with online classes and I wasn't totally sure that I could do grad school with that. So I kept up my search, and I was practically glued to my computer. Then I found my answer!

NAU was adding a Communication Sciences and Disorders program at the Flagstaff Campus Fall 2019! All I had to do was figure out what classes I would need for that so I could enroll in classes and wait to change my major. It felt like I was waiting for forever and I was having trouble trying to figure out the classes that I would have needed. So, I emailed about 10 different advisors and it took me over a month just to get a response from somebody. About a week or two ago I finally got an email from somebody saying that they changed my major to Communication Sciences and Disorders! All that was left to do was add a minor.

A minor isn't required for my degree, but a lot of my classes have a lot of prerequisites so I would have only had one or two classes for the next four semesters, but I can't keep my Lumberjack scholarship if I do that. So, I added a photography minor. That was something that I have always wanted to do, but my course load as a nursing major was way too intense for me to have done that in the past. Now that I finally was able to add that minor, I was still a bit short on classes and I have about 30 credits that count towards electives at the moment. So, I looked into adding another minor and I found out that I only needed three classes to finish a psychology minor and decided that that was perfect. To fill in the couple of blanks left after adding that as well, I am also going to be taking French!

I honestly don't think I have ever been so excited about school and my future. I've never been one to have much confidence in myself so I wasn't exactly hopeful for the future. However, now that I have this super exciting plan the future is all that I can think about. I am constantly looking up ideas for activities that I could do in therapy, places where I could shadow SLPs, and universities to go for grad school. The closer it gets the more excited I am. I finally don't have to worry about what I'm going to do with my life or needles being stuck in my arm or insanely difficult science classes. I just can't wait to be an SLP!!!!