EPISODE 86

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:05] MBH: Thanks for joining us at Keys for SLPs, opening new doors for speech-language pathologists to better serve clients throughout the life span; a weekly audio course and podcast from SpeechTherapyPD.com. I'm your host, Mary Beth Hines, a curious SLP who embraces lifelong learning. Keys for SLPs brings you experts in the field of speech-language pathology, as well as collaborative professionals, patients, and caregivers to discuss therapy strategies, research, challenges, triumphs, and career opportunities. Engage with a range of practitioners; from young innovators to pioneers in the field as we discuss a variety of topics to help the inspired clinician thrive.

Each episode of Keys for SLPs has an accompanying audio course on SpeechTherapyPD.com, available for 0.1 ASHA CEUs. We are offering an audio course subscription special coupon code to listeners of this podcast. Type the word KEYS for $20 off, with hundreds of audio courses on demand and new courses released weekly, it's only $59 per year with the code word KEYS. Visit SpeechTherapyPD.com and start earning ASHA CEUs today.

[OVERVIEW]

[0:01:24] MBH: Welcome to this episode of Keys for SLPs, Keys to Job, and Career Changes for the Speech-Language Pathologist. I'm host Mary Beth Hines. Before we get started, we have a few items to mention. 

[DISCLOSURES]

[0:01:36] MBH: Here are the disclosures. I am the host of Keys for SLPs and receive compensation from SpeechTherapyPD.com. I am LSVT and SPEAK OUT Certified.

Louise Pinkerton receives a salary from the University of Iowa. She is also the owner of Louise Pinkerton Voice Services. Louise receives an honorarium from SpeechTherapyPD.com. For her podcast appearance. She is LSVT and SPEAK OUT certified. She is the CE administrator for the Pan American Vocology Association.

So, here are the learning objectives for today. One, summarize what factors can play into the decision to change jobs or careers. Two, evaluate your own personal and work experiences to identify transferable skills to help steer change. And three, identify considerations for people in the arts, who transition to speech-language pathology.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:30] MBH: Now, we welcome our guest today. Louise Pinkerton, M.M., M.A., CCC-SLP. Louise is a clinical singing voice specialist, a clinical assistant professor coordinating voice services in the University of IowaÕs student clinic, and a speech-language pathologist for the LGBTQ clinic at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. For a complete bio, visit this course on speechtherapypd.com.

Louise, we are so happy to have you on Keys for SLPs to talk about job and career changes for the speech-language pathologist or for someone who's considering a change in job setting.

[0:03:08] LP: Thank you, Mary Beth. I'm so excited to talk about this. I think it's something that we all inevitably have changes in transitions, and I don't think we get a lot of preparation for them. So, it's a good thing to be thinking about.

[0:03:20] MBH: It sure is. I just want to say a little shout-out to our friend, Eileen Finnegan who connected us. She was your mentor, right?

[0:03:33] LP: Yes. She was my thesis advisor and mentor through my undergraduate and then afterwards.

[0:03:37] MBH: This is really a fun little story before we get started into our topic today. I was at ASHA this past November, and I needed a place to sit down and eat. I asked this nice lady who was quietly eating her lunch. ÒHey, is this seat free?Ó And Louise said, ÒYes.Ó And we struck up a conversation and turned out we had a friend in common. Then, we started talking more. I said, ÒHey, would you like to be on this podcast? You're a really interesting person and you've had a fascinating career.Ó

[0:04:15] LP: Yes, it's so neat, because it shows how small the world is. I mean, even though speech pathology is so big, you randomly sit down next to someone at ASHA, and you have people in common, and we have things we can collaborate on. I so appreciate the invitation and it's been so nice to get to know you.

[0:04:33] MBH: Well. It's been so fun to get to know you as well, and you really do have such an interesting journey that I'm so happy that we're going to get to share. I was also someone who came into speech-language pathology a little later in life. I had worked in marketing and sales for some time in my early 20s and had a career change myself. But you were in another field for Ð you really had a long career in another field. So, let's dive in. Tell us about your journey.

[0:05:05] LP: Yes. So, my journey has taken me lots of interesting places. You'll note in the introduction, I'm M.M., M.A. The first M.M. is for Master's in Music in Vocal Performance, and I include that because it overlaps tremendously with the work I do as a voice specialist. And even from the beginning, I've been doing lots of switching. My original college major was oboe performance or oboe, then I had an injury. Then I switched to voice. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to run with it and do my best, and ended up finishing my undergrad, going on to a master's.

Really, what you do after you get a Master's in Vocal Performance, is you try and build a performing career, and that involves doing training programs where you pay a little bit to get some opera experience. Doing young artists programs where either you don't have to pay or you actually get paid during competitions, doing recitals, things along those lines. I pursued that at the same time, I was doing some private teaching, and eventually, really got into university teaching. So, teaching undergraduates for voice lessons for four years to get them through their degree, really going from the beginning to where they can give a full recital at the end of their degree in specifically, classical music, but also working with a lot of music therapists, which would include doing some pop music, and musical theater and things along those lines.

So, I had a lot of fingers in a lot of different pots to make that work. Because in music, oftentimes you're piecing things together. So, I might be teaching at two universities, or one university in a big private studio and a little bit of performing, and kind of putting it all together. I got to a certain point where it's just like, I'm just really tired of all this, working so hard to keep it together. Not that I didn't enjoy it. But I wanted to just do one thing, versus having different employers and self-employed and all sorts of things. There's also only so far you can go into university without a doctorate unless the MasterÕs is truly the terminal degree. So, it's kind of frustrating to be in an environment where you really can't go forward at all.

I got to a point where it's like, I'm ready to do something. I want something more stable, more consistent as in I could work anywhere. I'm highly likely to be hired. Because as a soprano, there, out of 100 auditioners, there will be 1 tenor, 5 baritones, 15 mezzo-sopranos, and the rest of them will be sopranos. So, the odds were never in my favor. I looked at a lot of different things. Because I had been Ð really around your 30s, if you don't have a performing career solidly started, it's probably not going to happen.

So, I was now in my mid-40s, and going, ÒOkay, I need something different.Ó And I looked at a lot of different things. I looked at educational leadership because I really enjoy the university setting and would have loved to have been part of leadership. I had thoroughly enjoyed physics and acoustics, so I looked at maybe doing engineering, but I would have had to refresh myself on all the math. Straight out of undergrad, it would have been fine. Not so much now.

One of the things that I eventually came to was, wait a second, what about speech pathology? Because I had taken some classes in what was it care of the professional voice during my undergraduate that was taught by SLP. Really, got a lot out of that, and found it fascinating, and it had shaped my singing and my teaching. One of the things that was great is I didn't have to throw out everything I've always done. I'll certainly advocate for everything you do, build skills, and build abilities. But it was really nice to not be going to, back to absolute basics. It's like, ÒOkay, I have a whole body of information, I can transfer over and apply.Ó

That's kind of what brought me to speech-language pathology, and that job security, benefits, connecting in Ð also, I don't know, I find providing therapy to be similar to teaching private voice lessons. Because really, you're helping people build skills, you're helping them feel better about themselves. So, a lot of that transferred, and a lot of the things I enjoyed about teaching were going to be there in speech.

[0:09:51] MBH: Transferable hard skills and soft skills.

[0:09:54] LP: Yes. Yes. Very true. Very true.

[0:09:56] MBH: Well, I have to just give you a little shout-out because I'm doing the math here, and I had you about 10 years younger than you are. So, not everyone can see how great Louise looks if you're just listening to the audio, but I think anyone looking at the video on speechtherapypd.com would agree with me. Good job.

[0:10:17] LP: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That was the bane of my existence for a very long time, but I am no longer carded. So, that's a nice thing. We talked before, and there were some very interesting opportunities throughout all of these different directions I went career-wise because I told you the straight line up the ladder process here. We'll talk about how it kind of diverged different directions a little later. But I actually had like three opportunities, when I could have gone into the speech pathology or delved into it more.

[0:10:54] MBH: ThatÕs right.

[0:10:55] LP: Yes. I went a different direction because after I took that care of professional voice class, I wasn't really gung ho about going to get a Master's in Music at that point. And really, you can't do much specific with a bachelor's in music. You can do anything that requires a bachelor's degree, but not like specific music stuff. I had loved the professional voice class and really liked the professor that taught it. So, I went ahead and applied to do a Master's in Speech-Language Pathology, because I was told, ÒWell, you can do it from another field.Ó

I'll be honest, I didn't investigate it in great detail. I had a speech sound disorder so I knew some of what people did in the elementary schools. I knew what they did with voice, which was so cool. The funny thing is, I was accepted, even got some funding, not from the school, but from somewhere else. But my admission letter said I was admitted provisionally. Now, all of you are going, ÒSure, that makes sense. You were coming from another field and you didn't have the prerequisites.Ó But I, who at like 22, hadn't really figured out exactly what I would need to do. I was like, I got a little huffy. I was like, ÒWell, look at my resume. Look at my grades. Look at my GRE score. Why am I provisional?Ó

I don't think I even talked to anybody about it. I was just like, ÒWell, fine. I will go do something else.Ó So then, again, related to this care, the professional voice class, one of the doctoral students who was at my undergrad, I mean, it was his doctorate program. That was my undergrad, had said, ÒYou should really work within go Ingo Titze if you're really interested in this. Why don't you go get a Master's in Music at the University of Iowa?Ó I was like, ÒBrilliant.Ó

So, I came, I auditioned, I got accepted. A little miffed, I didn't get money. But soprano, kind of the way it works. But it was one of those, I had one remaining force that I had to finish with my bachelor's, and I have always had trouble with music theory. We'll talk later about imposter syndrome. But it took me a little longer to get that done. So, I was like, ÒWell, I'll defer for a year.Ó The thing is, when people defer, they almost never end up going because life happens, and life happened, and I got a job to pay the bills. By the time of year came around, I wasn't going to go.

It's just fascinating, because had I done that, I'm sure I would have taken a class with Ingo on principles of voice production. I probably would have ended up going to the Summer Vocology Institute significantly earlier than I did. And it's entirely possible, I would have done all that and gone, ÒI don't want this Master's in Music. I want a Master's in SLP.Ó Or, ÒI'll do a doctorate in SLP.Ó It really could have easily been a turning point for me again, but I didn't get to Iowa City until much later.

But we're not done yet. In one of the competitions I did later, sometimes you get written feedback from the judges, sometimes you actually get to sit down and talk to them. Both of which have their advantages and disadvantages. But in one of them, the person who I talked to, who is a judge, was really supportive and encouraging, when sometimes people use competitions to just tear people down. I had actually looked at going to his school to do a Ph.D. at a point I was thinking of doing a Ph.D. in music. And lo and behold, it's the University of Utah where Ingo Titze also taught.

So again, had I gone there to do a Ph.D., even if I stuck with the Ph.D. in music, I would have had that connection to the National Center for Voice and Speech, Summer Vocology, Ingo, all of that. And, again, could have made the pivot, could have become like a didactic faculty in speech. It's just fascinating that there were all these opportunities. And it wasn't until, I'm trying to think when I met that professor, actually 10 or 15 years after that, that I really sat down. I was like, ÒOkay, yes. This is the right choice.Ó

[0:15:30] MBH: Did you ever get to meet Ingo?

[0:15:31] LP: Oh, yes. I worked with him a lot. He was one of my thesis advisors. That's why I call him Ingo. Otherwise, he would be Dr. Titze.

[0:15:38] MBH: Okay. So, you had three opportunities, and it took you a while. Since we were talking about it, how old were you when you made that decision?

[0:15:50] LP: I don't know. I'd have to remember how old I am right now. It was 2012. I was 38 because I turned 40 during my Master's. Yes, we had a lovely party.

[0:16:06] MBH: All right. But what you made reference earlier, if a musical performer vocalist has not really found their way in the 30s, statistically, their chances decrease as they've gotten older. So, a lot of people in their 30s, fine, late 30s, fine. Okay, well, maybe this could be a turning point. Is that correct to say?

[0:16:30] LP: Yes, absolutely, and even a lot earlier because anybody that's in the arts, it's tough. Because not only do you have to be really good at what you do, but you have to meet the expectations of the business. Even if you meet that, there are so many things that make it difficult. I mean, all the traveling and maintaining relationships and friendships and the high pressure of performing. So, it's hard. Also, sometimes you have people that are like, I'm doing this, but it is not working for me, or it's not what I expected.

[0:17:07] MBH: ItÕs not fitting with the balance of everything else in your life.

[0:17:10] LP: Yes, exactly. I know, for myself, had I gone much further, I think, just personality-wise, it would have been very hard for me. My skin's probably a little bit too thin to manage some of that. So, it's probably a good thing.

[0:17:28] MBH: Well, it's hard, just what you were saying, about being a soprano, and going up against so many other people for a job and continuing to do that, week after week or year after year. ThatÕs a hard situation.

[0:17:44] LP: It is because you're always putting out Ð you're putting yourself out there to be judged. And even if you're good, that doesn't mean you're what they want. That's a very hard lesson to learn also. You could be the best person, ostensibly. But if they don't have a spot for a soprano, if they don't have a spot for a short soprano, it doesn't matter how good I am. Because there wasn't a place for me.

[0:18:12] MBH: Just so many other factors that you can't control. So, you found a new career that balanced with everything else in your life where you had a little bit more control over the hours work and the actual specifics of the job. We're so happy that you became an SLP.

[0:18:32] LP: Well, thank you. So am I. It's been great.

[0:18:35] MBH: Good. Okay. So, now that you have gone through that experience and evolved into an SLP, can you just describe your job right now?

[0:18:45] LP: Yes. I am a clinical assistant professor at the University of Iowa. It's not like a tenure-line position. The faculties that probably taught most people's academic courses, this is different. My job is full-time to run a team of graduate students doing voice services at our clinic. So, I know some schools you go out to do your clinical placements, or they might have some people that part-time do that supervision. That's my job full-time. Then, as part of that, I also take students to the LGBTQ clinic, one night a week. So, my job also includes doing some research and doing some service to the profession.

[0:19:27] MBH: Okay. Wonderful. The LGBTQ clinic is not at the university. It's part of the university, but not at the university clinic, the academic university clinic.

[0:19:37] LP: Correct. It's part of the medical hospital complex.

[0:19:42] MBH: Okay. Well, if we have time at the end, I would love to talk a little bit more about that. Such interesting work.

All right, based on your experience, and in your opinion, what factors come into play when someone is making a career or a job change?

[0:19:58] LP: Yes. I did do some reading up on this because I wanted to have some broader ideas. Some of the references, and weÕll have some good information there. I think the first thing is you have to find the motivation to change. And it could be that you want to change setting. It could be that you want to change roles where you are. It could be that you want to completely change fields, which was my route. Sometimes itÕs just related to personal fulfillment. This job is not making me feel connected, or like I'm accomplishing what I want. Or it can be really practical like the age doesn't pay enough. Or I don't like where I'm living, and I need to do something else where I can thrive better.

Oftentimes, we're looking for growth and challenge. I think for me, that was some of it. I really hit a lot of walls. Walls that didn't have doors. I often would tell my students in singing, to stop banging their head against the wall, trying to do something that wasn't going to work. I think I hit those, and there wasn't the opportunity to grow and develop like I wanted to.

Also, one of the things I loved about teaching was not only am I making a difference in I'm helping this person learn how to do whatever better or singing in that case earlier. But I was teaching music educators. What happens is that is exponential because that music educator is going to then go out and run a choir, or a general music classroom in the elementary school for 20 to 30 years.

Wow, that's 20 or 30 yearsÕ worth of people being influenced by the guidance I provide them. I really liked that idea that I was making a broader difference. For me, with speech and this kind of teaching, that's what I love about it. If I can get everybody on my team excited about voice, you can listen to our other podcast about that. They can go out there, and they can radically improve the access to voice services in our rural areas, in our underserved areas. That, to me, is part of that making a difference.

So, I wanted something that offered me that opportunity. I have that. But I wanted to keep that. Sometimes we burn out, and I'm sure that was part of my situation, is you do the same thing over and over and over and over, and not able to grow it and change it like you want to. Sometimes youÕre just done. Sometimes a break will do it. People will switch settings in speech pathology. Or if they're a school speech pathologist, they will go do a summer in a medical outpatient clinic and you do something different and you feel better. But sometimes it doesn't need bigger changes or grander alterations in what you're doing.

So, you really need to find that motivation to change and sometimes we get stuck and we'll talk about that in a second. What I also think is important is that you're okay with what's a squiggly career. There's a lovely TED talk about squiggly careers. That oftentimes, we view them as like stairsteps or climbing a ladder. Again, the narrative I gave you at the beginning was very much stair steppy. But that's not how my career was. I didn't mention that I did stage management. I didn't mention that I did a lot of temp work. That I was director of a YMCA day camp. That I was office manager for a counseling psychology training clinic.

All of these things were to make money or to be where I wanted to be, and we're shifting in and around what I was doing in music. I find that all of them have fit into what I was doing, and certainly what I do now. But it was pretty squiggly. 

[0:24:01] MBH: I haven't really heard that term applied to a career. But that makes a lot of sense. Your point is so good. You might be in it, and you might be thinking, ÒWow, this is not really where I want to be. But it's leading you to where you eventually want to go.Ó

[0:24:16] LP: Yes, absolutely. One of the things I think, what are the transferables? What are the skills you learned from it? Sometimes even learning what you don't want to do is very valuable. So, learning that, ÒWell, oh, this set of soft skills isn't functional. Then then you squiggle another direction and you do better.Ó And I also think this kind of relates to squiggly careers, but this is something I try and get across to my students. I think sometimes in speech pathology, especially for people that specialize, there's a status to certain jobs. In my area that status jobs, yes, are working at a specialty voice clinic.

Well, all the other jobs are important too. I had somebody once told me, like, I asked where they did their CF. And they're like, ÒOh, well, I didn't do a CF.Ó ÒWell, yes, you did. You just didn't do a specialty one.Ó I was just asking where she worked first. So, it was interesting the layer of judgment, she applied to herself. Everything's valuable because what we're doing is making a difference to people. There's no, ÒI'm just working in the schools.Ó I've heard that one from people too. It's like, ÒNo, all that's important. All of that is growth. All of that is part of your career journey.Ó Also, if your career journey stops, at the first place you find a job and you're happy with it, perfect. You don't have to always be moving forward. You don't have to want something different. So, we can squiggle, and we can also stop wherever we want to.

I think one of the things we also run into is where we can want a change, but we don't act on it. Because I had been dissatisfied for a while. But note, I talked about all the different things I checked out. And I mean, I took classes in educational leadership. I started reviewing all my math to think about engineering. It wasn't, ÒOh, I thought of these things.Ó It was really delving into it.

But there's so many pressures, and the personal ones, you're comfortable. It can be so easy to stay somewhere comfortable. You don't know what you're going to get. It's unknown. So, you stay where you are. Certainly, imposter syndrome can play into that. Am I capable of doing this new job, or new opportunity, or fitting in in a new place? That can really hold you still. Again, if it works for you, then it's not a problem. It's just when the job is not working for you anymore, and this is holding you back. We have to remember that when people switch, if you go from schools to medical, yes, there's a huge learning curve. But you know how to learn, and you know how to interact with people, and you're going to be trained, and you're going to be supported.

One thing I found interesting about some research related to stuttering, or maybe it was just overall, is that about 50% of the reason someone makes progress is the relationship, the therapeutic relationship. So, if you want to go somewhere radically different, you've got the relationship stuff down. It's just about getting the other stuff together. So, I definitely see that that fear of change, and being able to adapt, can make things difficult. But there's so many of the skills that we use in our field that you've got, if you've got experience.

One of the other things with balancing is also work-life demands. I actually went back to graduate school with a child in kindergarten and second grade. The only reason I was able to do that is because my husband did a lot of work. He actually had the kids on his own for a year while I came down to Iowa. Then he took a sabbatical and came down for the second year. But had I not had somebody who could do that, then that would have been the wrong time. It would have been something that would need to, probably wait until they were in middle school and much more self-sufficient. Or I would have needed to make the choice not to come to Iowa because I wanted to do voice stuff and they do voice stuff. But I would have done my degree at the University where we lived, which would have been perfectly fine. So, maybe you don't do exactly what you want, but you find what works for you.

[0:28:58] MBH: Well, shout out to him for helping to support you along that journey.

[0:29:03] LP: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know what his response to that is, why shouldn't every husband do that? Why do we think it's special that he did it? Because it should be a partnership or a collaboration? So, interesting idea there.

[0:29:16] MBH: Yes. Interesting idea. Good for him. I'm still going to give him a shout-out.

[0:29:21] LP: Okay. We can't change all of society from here.

[0:29:25] MBH: Let's just say he is a model husband.

[0:29:28] LP: There we go. There we go. Yes. But then the other thing that gets us stuck is you mentioned earlier that sunk cost fallacy. I have invested so much in this, how can I possibly leave? Right?

[0:29:43] MBH: Yes.

[0:29:43] LP: Because you've got to let go of some training experience, whatever you've given up or sacrificed for that, and that can be really hard, and I'm sure that's part of what held me back. It's like, I had I spent hours upon hours of practicing singing. I've spent hours upon hours of studying how you say foreign languages, and I'm just going to give that up. If it's not working for me, it doesn't really matter how much I put into it, right?

[0:30:15] MBH: And giving up that sunk cost fallacy really gives you the freedom. But it's a lot easier said than done. Absolutely.

[0:30:23] LP: Definitely. Then, sometimes it feels easier just to keep throwing more after it. Maybe if I get more qualifications in music, I'll be able to do more of what I want. But that probably would have been the worst thing for me because then I would have gone and I would have done a doctorate in music, in vocal performance as a soprano. There's already too many people with doctorates of music, to fill for the jobs that are available. So, I would have continued to invest in a field that was not going to provide me stable job opportunities, and that's really unfortunate. That's one of the things I have trouble with, with music compared to like the hard sciences or speech. Some of the arts and liberal arts graduates, so many more people than can potentially be employed with a Ph.D. I don't know that there's a good solution for it. But it bothers me a lot. If you're going to work that hard to get a Ph.D., you should be able to do something with it. But that's a soapbox for another time.

But anyway, you have to figure out when the time is to let go. Are you going to throw good money after bad to just hang on to something? I think another thing that holds us back is the whole idea of starting over. No matter what I can carry forward, I was still starting over. I was going to be taking classes with people right out of their undergrads. I was going to be the same level of career as people that had gone straight through. That's really humbling, and it's humbling to be a student again, and lose that status because I was no longer a faculty member. I was a graduate student.

It's not awful. It's totally manageable. But you have to be willing to switch and you're willing to understand, like, at one point, when I was taking my postback, one of the faculty members was taking me somewhere to go get something and there was a sign on the door that said faculty only. It was like, ÒOh, yes. I have to stop here.Ó Well, she went and got something for me.

[0:32:35] MBH: ThatÕs to stop doing your tracks.

[0:32:38] LP: Yes. It was a very in-your-face reminder of, ÒOh, yes. I'm taking undergrad classes right now, aren't I?Ó

[0:32:46] MBH: Yes. So, at what point in your graduate school journey did you decide that you wanted to be faculty, within a speech-language pathology department?

[0:32:57] LP: Yes. I think that was always in the back of my mind. I love the teaching part. Like I taught having something where I am making a difference, and being able to have a large influence over what's happening in my community was definitely something I had in mind. I've done a lot with learning pedagogy, and teaching, and ways to facilitate people becoming accomplished at skills. So, I definitely wanted to get back into that. I had started working with some externship students before I took this job. Even if it I had just stayed with that, that would have been good. 

[0:33:37] MBH: So, you went into the field with the intention of continuing to be an educator? 

[0:33:42] LP: Yes. I didn't know what shape or form it would take, but definitely. I will say one thing with wanting to change but not acting on it that I have continued to find an issue is the knowing how my past experiences and expertise are going to be recognized. I think when I applied, they were really helpful to be accepted. I think then once I got in the field, it was kind of like, ÒOkay, now you're on the same level as everybody else.Ó It was very much, but wait a second, I'm able to specialize right out of my grad degree. I have extra training because I've done it during my grad degree. I've been working since I was, what, 17? I have a lot more work experience that informs what I'm doing. So, you're not always going to get credit for that.

[0:34:34] MBH: It's very humbling.

[0:34:35] LP: Uh-huh. It's like, ÒYes, that's nice. We'll take advantage of what you know. But we're not going to give you anything for it.Ó

[0:34:42] MBH: No gold star.

[0:34:44] LP: No. I might get a gold star, but I'm not going to get better. Yes, even at the academic level, I would like to think the correlation between vocal performance and being a voice specialist is obvious, but I have found that it's not. Because people don't understand what I did in my prior career.

[0:35:07] MBH: Okay They do not understand because they weren't really seeking to understand?

[0:35:13] LP: Because they donÕt have any knowledge of how music works, how music teaches, how faculty positions work in music. So, lack of knowledge and not looking further, but I have had someone say to my face, I see absolutely no relevance in your music studies to speech-language pathology.

[0:35:31] MBH: I would have to respectfully disagree. Because when I met you at ASHA, within one minute, I could Ð within 10 seconds. I mean, to me, that's very obvious. But maybe that's because I'm so tone-deaf. Maybe that helps me understand how important understanding music is to voice.

[0:35:51] LP: Yes. And I think being willing to face that, and knowing that that may come and somebody's going to take whatever you have invested all this in, see no relevance in it. And it doesn't matter what you think it. It's just something that you may be faced with.

[0:36:07] MBH: Okay, so really, it's a loss of status and a little bit of a loss of identity, at least temporarily. You were a faculty member, you had status, you were respected, you were respected by your colleagues, as well as your students, and you had many accomplishments that had exponential effects. And then all of a sudden, you are a humble graduate student.

[0:36:34] LP: Yes. Being a graduate student is wonderful. Honestly, if I could make a career of being a graduate student, I might do that. But it is a change in identity. It is interesting in the United States how much of our identity is tied into our job, or for people that are in the art, or are an athlete, how much is tied to the particular thing that they do. So, I was a singer. Even when I was teaching, I was a singer, because I was a teacher of singing. I was an opera singer because I'd sung opera. This was very important to who I was because under it all, I was a musician. Although, there are instrumentalists that will tell you singers are not musicians. But I just Ð

[0:37:18] MBH: I think, I would have to respectfully disagree again, as someone who has no musical talent.

[0:37:27] LP: Yes. It's interesting how we all draw those lines, and you're not on the right side of it. But part of this has really, and I think, for me, anybody that leaves an artistic or creative field, part of what you did is part of your identity. When you drastically leave that, one of the questions is, who am I? For me, it was, ÒAm I still a singer? Am I still a professional singer?Ó Because I'm not being paid to sing anymore. In fact, I really don't sing very much at all.

I mean, I did at the holidays, because somebody, one of my friends needed someone in their church choir that could do the high notes. So, yes, okay, I can do that. But I didn't get paid. But it was church choir. Even as I was starting working as an SLP, I struggled with what to call myself or what to say. I used to be a singer. I was a professional singer. I was music faculty. I played with all of these. At one point, I said to one of the graduate students I was supervising, well, I'm a former musician. She's like, ÒYouÕre not a former musician. You're still a musician.Ó It struck me because the thing is, if I'm a former musician, as someone who sang and taught professionally, what does that make everybody else who didn't sing or perform professionally? It's insulting to anybody else. I didn't walk away from those skills, even if I'm not using them.

So, that was a very interesting moment where it was reflected back at me, how much our identities are important to everybody because she was a musician. If I was a former musician, what did that mean about her? Very interesting. There's a neat article that's in the reference list. That's about, I think, three or four professional opera choristers, who lost their jobs because in Europe, you could actually be a full-time professional opera chorister. But they started to go to contract work, so they all lost their positions. It talks about their process of how they moved into other things, how they see themselves. One person doesn't see herself as a singer at all and went into a completely different field, another teaching music and still really feels that professional singer is a core part of her identity. So, we can go all sorts of different directions with it.

[0:40:06] MBH: Where have you landed on it? What do you think?

[0:40:09] LP: Well, I definitely don't say former musician or former singer anymore. I used to be, I don't like, I think that kind of takes away from it. I'd probably more often say, I was a music faculty member, or I am an experienced voice teacher, or an experienced performer. So, I can acknowledge what I did. But I'm not saying I'm doing it now. I know SLPs with a music background or a dance background or whatever, that are still very active in that. That's just not been the path I've chosen.

I will say that the identity issue also, it makes a difference whether it's a choice, or it was forced on you. In the article I talked about, yes, none of those people had a choice. It was like, ÒBoom, the positionÕs gone. Go find yourself.Ó That's going to make it a harder process. So, if you've been let go from a job, or if you have to make a shift because you need to move or so forth, that may be different in how you process the loss of one identity and the development of others.

[0:41:17] MBH: That can really be traumatic to some people.

[0:41:20] LP: Oh, yes. It's a huge loss. Because we pull these things, and again, Americans make their jobs so much a part of who they are. All of a sudden, there's a gaping hole where that used to be. I think another thing I definitely want to talk about is the whole idea of being a quitter, right? Because I know, in music, we would talk as undergraduates, when someone would change majors out of music. ÒOh, they quit, because they couldn't hack it.Ó Or, ÒThey didn't have the musical skills and ability to persist and do this.Ó Honestly, now looking back, I'm like, ÒThey may have made the wisest decision, and they made the decision that makes sense for them.Ó

[0:42:16] MBH: When you call, the process of calling someone else a quitter, kind of you're giving yourself a pat on the back.

[0:42:22] LP: Exactly. Also, I mean, it got on Facebook in 2006, so it was still close enough to undergraduate to be connected with people and connecting with them. Part of the time, I was like, ÒOh, so and so is not in music anymore. Isn't that interesting?Ó For other people who might happen to have liked better, it was, ÒOh, they made a choice to do something else.Ó I wonder if I might want to talk to them about how the process went.

So, there's so much judgment when people leave, as I know from the arts because actually going from performing to teaching, is also one of those, ÒOh, you couldn't make it as a performer. So, you're teaching.Ó I don't know with SLPs, what you run into, but I'm sure there are some, ÒOh, they couldn't handle it at the medical center. They're going to go to the schools.Ó It doesn't matter, like I talked about earlier, you need to do something that fits with you in your life, and that should be what's motivating your change.

I would say that's probably what motivated these changes for people. They had something else that was their passion, they had something else that was more practical. And I will also say, one of the other things people did as undergraduates, I didn't do it as much because I was still learning a great deal about singing. But they would predict who would be successful. Well, because I don't know if I've said it, I was at Indiana University, which at the point was the school for opera. Imagine a place to be the place I start singing.

Honestly, people I went to school with at, undergraduate or where masterÕs and doctorate are out singing internationally. But people would be like, ÒOh, they study with so and so, and they don't sing well, and they'll never make it.Ó Or, ÒThey don't practice enough. They're never going to make it.Ó

[0:44:18] MBH: ThatÕs a lot of judgment.

[0:44:19] LP: Especially the so and so is absolutely going to have a career. You know what? We were wrong. We were so wrong. There are people on Broadway that people were saying would never make it. There are people that are supposed to be singing internationally that aren't even in the field. I don't know how much judgment is inherent in speech-language pathology. But I also wonder if our undergraduates run into that a lot. Because what if you don't get into graduate school? Or what if you choose not to go to graduate school? What if you choose to become an SLPA? There's nothing wrong with that. All of those are valid. But what kind of pressure have we put on all those students that get undergraduate?

[0:45:02] MBH: But if we just looked at life like, let's just be happy for whatever anyone is doing that fits into their life and meets their goals, and everything that they want to do in life. If you came at it from a position of respect. But again, easier said than done, especially in a very competitive field.

[0:45:23] LP: Absolutely. I am sure there are places where that's not the ethos. But I wonder how many people internalize that pressure. So, even if no one's saying, ÒOh, so and so quit and went to be an accounting major, or business major, or whateverÓ, have they internalized the, ÒOh, well, they quit. They couldn't do it. They couldn't manage it.Ó Those things resonate, especially if you internalize it. I've been looking a little bit at some of the writing people have done about how they get into speech and it's not what they want. It's also true that sometimes you can go all the way through and you get there. And it's like, ÒOh, this is not what I thought it would be.Ó Or, ÒIt's exactly what I thought it would be and I hate it.Ó So then, we shift, we squiggle. Again, it doesn't mean anything about the journey they took. It means that where they are, doesn't fit. 

[0:46:20] MBH: Right. ItÕs really about being honest with yourself.

[0:46:27] LP: That's hard. I also think of the age of our graduate students. Both of us are more established professionals, so we can look back at it. So, I don't mean to sound patronizing or anything. But when you're in your 20s, it's very hard to see that. It is very hard to see that. When you get a few decades removed from that, you can look back and go, ÒYes, I'm cool with that. That was a decision for me.Ó If younger people are listening, I would like to say that you are going to evaluate things and you are going to make the decisions that will work, because you're going to keep moving forward in some way.

[0:47:06] MBH: And everything will be okay.

[0:47:08] LP: Yes. It all helps you develop skills.

[0:47:11] MBH: Yes. Every job that you have, whether you like it or don't like it, it builds your skills, and it builds your experience, and teaches you how to work with different kinds of people, and teaches you what you want to do, and what you don't want to do.

[0:47:30] LP: Absolutely. Yes.

[0:47:31] MBH: I say that so easily. But it took me a while to get there if I'm being very honest.

[0:47:36] LP: So, I do want to add, particularly for people that are in the arts or something that you have to have passion or talent to pursue. There's also a lot of worry about regrets. I had an interesting interaction with somebody I went to graduate school with because there are quite a few people that transfer out of the arts into SLP. You need to be really smart for both of them. I don't remember the details of how the conversation started. But we were talking about her experience, and that she had changed majors as an undergrad. I don't know if I said it out loud, but the gist of what I was thinking is, ÒWow, that was a really great choice. And look what it's giving you career-wise and opportunities to really be able to delve in and hit the ground running in this field.Ó Her response, in referencing that I had gone a different direction, and then found my way back was, ÒBut at least you tried.Ó

So, what I got out of that is that anybody that leaves the arts or passion, there's always that question of what if? Or at least, for a while, there's that question of what if? I thoroughly answered my what-ifs. I was not going to have a professional singing career and I learned a lot along the way. I can look back and go, ÒWow, it would have been cool to make that decision earlier.Ó Because again, I can be tenured by now. But her looking from having made that decision, what she saw was, but look at all the cool things you got to do. And look at the fact that you know for a fact, you were able to work professionally, and that you could hack it.

It was very interesting to see both sides of it. Me, looking back, that could have easily been me if I had made the decision to change earlier. I think both choices are so valid. I think it's so brave to recognize when something's not working for you and to change. So, if you're worried about regretting making a change, or want to know what you can do or accomplish, maybe you do a little more, and you see what you can do. But we're all going to have regrets. We're all totally going to have regrets on the choices we make.

But yes, I found that such an interesting interaction, too, that we were coming from totally opposite viewpoints for the same thing.

[0:50:15] MBH: Yes, that is really interesting. Looking at the same thing from just two polar perspectives. But you're right. There are these sayings, ÒNo regrets.Ó But I think that's part of the human condition that you're going to have some regrets. It's learning to live with them and make the most out of the decisions that you made. You can't go back in time.

[0:50:42] LP: Absolutely. Because if I could go back in time, I would have redone everything by now and who knows where I would be? It could be worse.

[0:50:51] MBH: Okay, so yes, we make the decisions that fit our lives best at the time, and then we move forward. Let's talk about transferable skills. Whether you are someone in the arts, who is thinking about SLP, or you are someone Ð or any field, thinking about SLP, or an SLP, who's thinking about a setting change, a job change, maybe from the schools to medical or medical to the schools. Or an SLP who said, ÒI've given this a good run, it's time to do something else entirely.Ó So, let's talk about transferable skills.

[0:51:29] LP: Yes. This is so important. Mary Beth and I have been both referring to this about how you learn things from every job. You learn things from every experience. Then, you have to sit down and quantify it, or figure out a way to explain to someone that yeah, actually studying vocal performance is helpful as an SLP who does voice therapy.

So, where I kind of started is I looked at what did I regularly do, particularly as a voice teacher? Because that was what I'd done the most with and just created a list. So, I taught lessons. I coordinated recitals and concerts. I collaborated with multiple different departments. I taught some academic classes. So, just make a list of what you do. Then, you can start breaking down, what are the basic skills that are in those activities or tasks?

So, if I take teaching lessons, perceptual listening, making judgments, making a diagnosis, applying interventions that will lead to change, knowing how to facilitate motor learning. ÒOh, all of those are good for almost all parts of speech-language pathology.Ó Talk about a list of what we need to be able to do. All the communication experiences that I had, and being able to work with people from diverse backgrounds, being able to build a multiyear relationship, because I would work with some of these students for four years. I miss that part with speech pathology because I get people for a semester, and then they're gone.

But being able to have a multiyear really mentoring relationship, and sometimes I did lesson plans because lesson plans are awesome. But if you can break it down and pull it down to what are the core skills, there are lots of lists online about identifying skills that underlie activities. So, you can reference those and look at it. Or, if you're going from the schools to medical, you can be like, ÒWell, here's some of the diagnosis I've worked with. I have worked with kids with cerebral palsy. I have done some dysphasia in the schools.Ó Or ÒMedical to school, well, I did adult but I also did pediatric outpatient, and here were the things. We did do reading. We did do speech sound disorders.Ó Make more of those experiences that are more relevant for the new position.

I think that's also an important thing is to figure out what parts of your experience are relevant. You may be really, really awesome at one thing. I would like to think I'm really, really awesome at singing. That really doesn't matter as a speech-language pathologist. Can I model the exercises? Yes. Can I model the singing exercises? Yes. That's all I need. So, I'm not going to make a huge big deal, other than just say, I have the knowledge to be able to communicate with people. But that kind of diagnostic work I did with teaching, or the knowledge of vocal pedagogy to teach singing, and then vocal rehabilitation and intersecting those two, that's valuable.

So, figuring out what's relevant, and certainly knowing if you're ready. I wouldn't have been able to just start a master's without doing my prereqs, right? Or my postback?

[0:54:55] MBH: Provisionally.

[0:54:56] LP: Provisionally. Yes, yes. So, are there things you need to do to get ready, before you Ð even if you have some skills that are transferable, there's something you need to do before you can make that change. What are the gaps? Are there things you need to fill in? Then, then keep thinking about how you're going to package your experiences and skills to make the case because there are people that go from diverse fields to diverse fields. What they do is they make the case that they can do, and learn, and figure it out. WeÕll talk about another squiggle of mine. I actually talked to the CIA at one point.

[0:55:33] MBH: Really?

[0:55:34] LP: Yes, I did. They did a recruiting event on campus. I was finishing my Master's in Music, and I'm like, what they had up there was about, do you know languages? Do you know how to teach and work with people? Because they don't just look for people to be embedded in different places and be spies. There's all sorts of other things the CIA did. 

So, to package my background as a music performer, the package was that I have all this language experience. I know how to learn how to say languages in a particular way because I really know the phonetics very well. I have all this background in structuring education and could help teach people to teach. And I have all this organizational structure background, like when I did non-profit work, and I worked at a Ð I was a stage crew chief and did backstage stuff. So really, managing large numbers of people in facilities. That's not where I would start in music. But that was the package that I presented to the CIA. It's not that I didn't get a job, by the way. We had a talk as I was preparing my resume, and I decided that I didn't want to move to DC because it didn't fit with my life.

[0:56:51] MBH: So, creative packaging, but in the end, doing something that fits with your life.

[0:56:56] LP: Let's jump back to someone in the creative arts, looking at a career change to SLP. I'm specifically thinking like musicians and singers because thatÕs the background is. I think we've talked about a lot of the things you need to consider ahead of time. Say you're at that point, you're like SLP sounds pretty cool. The number one thing I would say is make sure youÕre okay doing swallowing therapy, or speech sound disorders treatment because jobs that just do voice are very few and far between. I find the entire field fascinating. You could drop me in any of the specialty areas, and I would find a way to thrive. So, make sure there are multiple things in the field that you'd be interested in.

Fundamentally, what you need to work as a clinician is a master's degree. It's a two-year program, and you don't necessarily need to go like to a voice-focused program if you want to do voice. If you need to do one that's nearby, because it's a state school, go for it. There are other ways you can get advanced training in voice, and if you have transferable things, again, those are transfer.

Definitely, if you are going to target a program to do voice, look at the faculty, look at the clinical experiences you get, see what kind of research is going on there. You can also do a reverse fork, like with the externships. Throughout the degree people will, or you have to do experiences in clinics, so you could target those towards settings that would have voice, or work with your program to do that. There's also some programs where you can study vocology outside of your schooling. And there are also some clinical fellowships that are very voice-focused.

Academic work-wise Ð oh, sorry, bad transition. Okay. So, that's if you want to go to into clinical work. Some people might be more interested in going directly into academic work. I have heard that this can work nicely for people that already have a doctorate in, say, vocal performance, or vocal pedagogy, or something like that. Because you do have a doctorate and it does relate to the field. What you don't have as the field-specific information. One of the things I have seen some folks do is they will go get the MasterÕs in Speech-Language Pathology. They get the core knowledge, they understand the field, they understand clinical work.

Then, in working with a mentor who is in the academic field of speech and voice, they look for academic positions where they can transfer their knowledge about research from their existing Ph.D., and their knowledge about teaching, but they do it in a speech-language pathology setting. We, as a field, actually, have a lot of people that are tenure-line and didactic faculty who are not in speech-language pathology. It can be psychology. It can be neurology. It can be music. So, that is a way to move more directly to the academic route, you do not need to get two doctorates. I would highly recommend it, not getting two doctorates.

[0:59:57] MBH: Okay. That's very interesting. Good point. Getting a mentor is so important for anyone, no matter where they are along their stairstep or squiggly line journey, right?

[1:00:12] LP: Very true. 

[1:00:14] MBH: Well, we are just about out of time, I do want to come back to, at some point, you started to specialize in gender-affirming voice training. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[1:00:29] LP: That's a field that actually has been around since the 1970s, just for context, and does have a pretty solid evidence base behind it. Very much about improving people's quality of life. So, I did a little bit of it prior to coming to Iowa, but one of my responsibilities here with this job was to build that partnership with the LGBTQ clinic because they wanted to have somebody in-house doing voice at their multidisciplinary clinic. So, that's really when I delved into it, and I did some specialized training that was really in-depth. I did a lot of reading. And I find that there's a huge overlap, not just with voice. We do a lot of voice therapy things as part of gender-affirming, but you're doing social skills. You're doing language. You're doing articulation. Because oddly enough, articulation is gendered. Really, I can think of gender-affirming care as voice plus. ItÕs voice, plus all this other stuff, that does the communication part.

[1:01:36] MBH: Wow, that's really interesting. I never really Ð I was focused more on the voice. But those are Ð now that you say that, it's very, very obvious. Except articulation. I never really think of articulation as being one gender or the other. So, can you clarify that a little bit?

[1:01:53] LP: I find that one fascinating, which is, why bring it up because how do you socialize people to articulate differently based on gender? But we do. Stereotypical feminine speakers are going to be more precise with their articulation and tend to articulate with the tip of the tongue in the front. A stereotypical masculine speaker is going to be less precise because they're using more effort in their articulation. What some of my clients have said, is it feels like they're kind of articulating in the middle. Now, of course, they're putting their tongue where they need to, but it's maybe whether you're based in the front, or based in the middle.

[1:02:33] MBH: Very interesting. Well, one thing I love about my job as a podcast host, is that I learn something new every day, and you have taught me many things. But that is something in particular that I will remember. So, I'll remember it all. But I'll take that with me. I'll be talking about that tomorrow. We are just about out of time. Can you tell us a little bit about Ð you've come this far in your journey, what are your future projects or plans?

[1:03:05] LP: Oh, my future project is figuring out how to narrow down my future projects. I like to focus on things related to graduate student education, or really anybody education. So, at the moment, I'm working with a group of students from biomedical engineering, to develop an app to work on training perceptual listening skills. We have a lot of great information on what helps people learn, but it still just takes a lot of time in practice. So, is there any way we can make it more compact, make it like Duolingo, and help people get those skills more quickly and more easily. Also partnering in perceptual skills for dysarthria. I think those two really intersect in the idea of again, how do we get people to be good, and making those clinical evaluations?

[1:03:55] MBH: Well, good luck to you with that, and good luck to you with your career. I'm so happy that you did have a career change, and so happy there was an empty seat next to you at ASHA. You just never know when you're going to meet a new friend. So, it was great to get to know you, and I know that you might be coming back to SpeechTherapyPD.com for some more courses. So, I look forward to seeing you in the future.

[1:04:23] LP: Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and it is amazing what can happen from just as little conversations or connections you make. But yes, I look forward to continuing to know you and continuing to work with SpeechTherapyPD.com.

[1:04:36] MBH: All right, Louise, will you have a great day and we really appreciate you sharing your expertise and your journey with us. So, take care.

[1:04:44] LP: You too. Bye.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[1:04:46] MBH: Thanks for joining us here at Keys for SLPs, providing keys to open new doors to better serve our clients throughout the lifespan. Remember to go to SpeechTherapyPD.com to learn more about earning ASHA CEUs for this episode and more. Thanks for your positive reviews and support. I would love for you to write a quick review and subscribe. Keep up the good work.

[END]
KFSP 83		Transcript

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