Twitter and What I Found There

I LOVE WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND THEN RESEARCHING IT ISN'T A PAIN, IT'S FUN AND INTERESTING AND OH MY HECK THANK GOODNESS FOR INTERESTS!!
...Now that I've gotten my initial rant out of the way, I kinda wanna talk about my major, Speech Pathology, and what's going on surrounding it on Twitter.

What do people even talk about on Twitter regarding Speech Pathology?

Everything! That's what's so beautiful about it! *heart eye emoji* Since speech pathology involves treatment and dealing with patients, a lot of people on Twitter are talking about different treatment methods, approaches to problems, and their personal feelings about the practice itself. There is a lot of bouncing off of ideas. I found one Twitter account where a pediatric speech therapist shares her therapy methods to kinda show a little bit of that. There are also many Twitter accounts where people just relate to each other in the profession. They talk about things that no one else really understands or is interested in. It's like it's own little community.

My favorites? (for now...)

One story I found extremely interesting was one about a new budget proposal in Australia that provides coverage to children to have therapy for stuttering AS LONG AS THEY ARE TREATED THROUGH THE LIDCOMBE PROGRAM. What's that all about? Why would you make a proposal to help children overcome their stutter, and then limit it to only one program? I feel a monopoly over stutter treatments beginning, and I don't like it. Anyway, here's one of the many stories about it.

Another story I found interesting was about a woman who was detained at an airport because she had a stutter. I understand that airports are trying to be thorough and ensure the safety of all of their passengers, but I don't understand how someone stuttering the words "Costa Rica" is an indication of terrorism or danger of any sort. Here is the link to that story (it's not a link to Twitter, but I figured it would be better to link directly to the story rather than the tweet I found about it.). As you've probably noticed, I am fascinated by stuttering, and I didn't even notice that both of my favorite stories were about stuttering until just barely..

What do I think?

I honestly think I love speech pathology even more. I understood some of the jokes that people had on twitter regarding the profession, and I loved researching about what people were saying about it. Everyone seemed very professional in their approach to talking about speech pathology. I like that people were posting about conferences involving different aspects of speech pathology, and I wanted to become a part of the community. It was like these people wanted to relate to someone who deals with the same thing every day all day, and instead of being put off by it, I was intrigued. I didn't expect nearly the amount of conversation about speech pathology as there was. It was awesome to see people sharing ideas and wanting to help other people become better. I didn't see that coming at all. I guess my opinion of the human race is lower than it should be..

I really hope I found something that I'll look forward to every day. I realize that not everyone on Twitter is an amazing person or has the same standards for social media as others, so there were people I found on twitter who would talk down about the profession and made it seem as if they hated their job. However, the amount of good that comes from it, and the amount of people talking about the positive impact speech pathologists have on their lives and the lives of their kids makes me want to already be working in the field.

Madmike1952 "Speech-Language Pathology" 9/23/2010 via Wikipedia. Attribution Share-Alike Licensing.