Now that I’ve graduated, I’m learning that Elms was apparently way more worldly than I realized. I’ve met all these people in graduate school who went to different undergraduate programs, and they keep telling me that I had all these experiences at Elms that they never had the opportunity to do at their schools. For example, Elms is one of two colleges in New England that has a practicum in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD). Undergraduates are required to do 100 hours of placement in a clinical setting. And Elms also has an audiology lab, which is really great. Not a lot of my classmates now had those experiences as part of their undergraduate degree.
Elms certainly prepared me for graduate school. I feel like I’m more prepared than many of my classmates. Those with an undergraduate degree in CSD do not have much experience with the clinical application of their coursework. At Elms, we did a lot of examining patients and applying what we learned to how we should treat them. We’re doing a lot of that now in grad school and a lot of my classmates are saying “I never did anything like this before.”
The faculty at Elms always try to prepare you for graduate school, or for the real world if you are going straight into work. They make sure that you’re well-prepared and well-rounded. The array of classes really allows you to study in all areas of speech.
I want to be a speech pathologist and work in a rehab setting helping people who suffered strokes or brain injuries and now have trouble communicating. There’s also a speech-language pathologist in every school working with children who have language or speech issues. You can also work in early intervention for children who are late talkers, or with older people who have trouble swallowing because its the same muscles. You can even work with singers who need voice work. You can do anything in this field.
I chose to go to Elms because I’m from Eastern Massachusetts, and the campus was far enough away that I could feel independent, but close enough that I could come home for the weekend. I knew I didn’t want a bigger school because that would be overwhelming. I wanted a more personal connection with my professors – and I definitely got that.
I applied to so many schools that were not like Elms, schools in Maine, and New Hampshire, and some bigger state universities. What drew me to Elms was just the idea of how I didn’t want to be just a number. I wanted to have professors who actually knew my interests, and my strengths and who would give me that personal feedback to make me better.
It kind of felt right when I went to tour it. The first tour I went on with my dad, we looked around and he said ‘This is it,’ and I replied ‘Yeah, it is.’
I was super involved with campus activities, more than I was in high school because I wanted to stand out and not just go through the motions. Being involved really changes your experience. I knew so many people who commuted to campus went to class, went home, and didn’t do anything on campus. But I was involved in Student Activities, I was involved in Campus Ministry. I still go back and visit Eileen Kirk, the director of campus ministries.
Bachelor of Arts, Communication Sciences and Disorders. Enrolled at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, seeking her master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology.