You Might Be an SLP If...

This year I've had the amazing privilege of sharing my room with a fellow SLP (yes, I actually enjoy sharing a space... more on that in another post). We often have a laugh over funny SLP-inspired happenings that creep up in our private lives. It got me thinking about all of those little things that we encounter that only Speech-Language Pathologists can appreciate. 

So, here is a little list of "You Might Be an SLP if" happenings:

You Might Be an SLP if...

• you've diagnosed actors/hosts/reporters while watching your evening television. 
• your office was once a closet. 
• you had to say no to a potential date due to their slight lisp. 
• ðɪs ɪz wət ju jus fɔr ə sikrət kod. 
• you can imitate any speech distortion on command. 
• there are more letters after your name than are in your name. (M.S., CCC-SLP!) 
• when water "goes down the wrong way" you dismiss it by saying, "Don't worry, I just aspirated some thin liquid". 
• all of your tweets contain the hashtags of #SLPeeps, #SLP2b, etc. 
• you have entire conversations in abbreviations, standard scores, and percentiles. 
• you named your cat "Syntax" and your dog "Dysphonia". 
• your superhero name would be "Buccinator". 
• you make a beeline for the kids books section of any bookstore.
• your tongue depressors are flavored. 
• adults using incorrect grammar gives you the heebie-jeebies.
• you think of the ASHA conference as your "family reunion". 
• you wear earplugs at concerts and put headphones on your children in loud places. 
• you think TpT should really be called "SLPs pay SLPs" (SpS)! 
• most of your paycheck is spent at the dollar store/spot on toys, reinforcers, and organizational materials. 
• you watch a person's mouth during conversation. 
• you know that speech, voice, and language are very different things. 
• your friends/family ask what you think about their child's speech even though you have been secretly assessing them since birth and already have a full diagnostic report ready. 
• you understand medical shorthand and teacher abbreviations. 
• you no longer have to look up standard scores to your most common assessments. 
• your Facebook wall has more posts from SLP blogs than your friends. 
• you can take any board game and tweak it to be a therapy material. 
• you use terms like "tympanic membrane" and "vocal folds" in place of the layman's terms of "eardrum" and "vocal chords". 
• you find random packets of "SimplyThick" in your pockets when doing laundry. 
• your own children are fluent in ASL by the age of 1. 
• your SpEd team or rehab team are some of your closest friends. 
• you've worked in SNFs, schools, clinics, EI, private therapy, and more... in one year! 
• you truly enjoy helping others and love your career. 

I hope you find this humorous and have enjoyed this fun little blog post! Have a great week!