I can’t remember all of my learning experiences, but a couple stands out. A few years ago my husband taught me how to ride a motorcycle. The key to riding a motorcycle is balance and you can’t see balance. This was hard since I am a visual learner sometimes. No matter how often I watched my husband ride around the parking lot it didn’t help. The way I finally learned was I just got on the bike and went. My husband walked and ran beside me yelling out instructions. It’s a lot easier to hold the bike up when you’re going fast (10-20mph) then it is when you’re going slow (5mph). But, going slow is the key to balance, which is the key to riding. After many hours of circling that parking lot I finally got it. It’s just like riding a bicycle, you never forget how.
Another thing I’ve learned how to do is put things together. (Toys, furniture) My husbands works a lot, and if I want things done sometimes I have to do them myself, even the “manly things”. When I’m putting something together I can’t use the instructions, they confuse me. If the instructions show what the completed project looks like, I go by that. I guess this is the visual learner coming out in me again.

The thing I like best about learning is of course the knowledge or the ability to do something that follows the learning process. I like it when people ask me a question about something pertaining to communication disorders and I can answer them or when my mom asks me to show her how to make a tasty peaches and cream braid.

There are a few things that give me fits when I’m trying to learn. Some things just take time and when I’ve got somebody standing over me saying,” do you understand yet” just makes it harder for me to learn. Another thing is when I was in high school I had a lot of trouble in math, I had to have a tutor. The reason I had to have tutor was because the math teacher told me that I just didn’t understand it and because of the depth of my misunderstanding I was never going to get it and I just needed to stop wasting her time. Did she have a right to give up on me? Maybe she did, but it still hurt me in the area of math. One last thing that is giving me fits. Until recently I had always learned by listening, taking notes, studying and spilling everything back out on a test. I had never had to learn by application. Now it seems application is the only way I’m learning and I’m still struggling with this.

This is a tough question. I don’t know the answer for sure; I just know what I think. So I will talk myself through this.
How can I continue to forge my professional and academic development? The only way I know to do this is to continue my education, not just to graduate school, but possibly further on. I believe the new knowledge and application skills I gain in school will always directly impact my professional development. Even once I am finished with school, I will never really be finished with school. I will attend continuing education courses whether required or not. I think these courses will keep me up to date on new developments in therapy.
I think that I also need to “shadow” a speech pathologist in several different professional settings, if this is possible. I think this will show me what really goes on, the reality of therapy. I also think I need to volunteer somewhere that I could work with impaired children. I believe this would help me become more comfortable working with people.
How might I inquire into my learning in an ongoing manner?
The answer to this I believe is to read read and read some more. Read educational and informative books, besides my textbooks. Now that I’ve been introduced to mailing lists I think it would be useful to subscribe to some concerning speech pathology and the disorders we will be dealing with. Maybe even check into receiving newsletters from surrounding schools and hospitals to keep up with new developments in these two settings.
How might my professional and academic development be informed by my ongoing research?
Well, I believe my ongoing research will lead me to discover new developments in the treatments of disorders and diseases we are involved with. For example, there could be advances in the medical treatment of Alzheimer’s that could change when speech therapy would begin and it could change the level of aggression of the therapy. This of course would affect me professionally.
Academically I believe ongoing research would supplement everything I learn in school and it may also clear up any confusion I have about new material being learned. Research may also lead me to new areas of interest.
How do I respond to opportunities for inquiry?
Anytime I come across something I do not understand or that is new to me, I search for more information until I have a better understanding and know more about it.
How do I meet my own learning needs?
This is very hard to answer. I learn best when information is very clear. So, I ask a lot of questions and I do a lot of reading and re-reading. If I become confused because of an answer given to a question I try to find the answer on my own. If something I have read confuses me, I read it again or ask questions.

My parents always taught me it was important to do good in school because without an education you had nothing to offer society and society would only offer you the hardest and the most low paying jobs. My brother did not do well in school and he did not go on to college, he is five years older than I am so during my high school years I watched him struggle with life after graduating. Because of this my parents were very hard on me through my school years. C's were cause for punishment by grounding, B's were o.k., but they told me I could do better. When I struggled with Algabra they paid a tutor to work with me every day after school. I can't say who was a greater influence; my mom or my dad. Their contributed influence was of equal importance. My mom went to nurses training and became an R.N. within 2 years. For as long as I can remember she held a steady, high paying job. Every where we went people asked her questions about their health and the health of family members. At a very young age I knew people respected my mom because of her job. Our family to this day still calls her 'Nurse Nancy'. She always told me I needed an education to become independent. Although my dad attended UK buisness school, he partied to much and didn't get a degree. This was kind of funny since he was harder on me then my mom. But my dad experienced first hand what the lack of an education causes. He struggled to hold jobs and never really had a high paying job. But when he was 45 he proved to me just how important he thought an education was. He went back to school. He went to nurses training at Shawnee State University. He also went on to get his master's degree in theology from a bible school in Georgia. When I was 12 and wanted to join the Navy and become a fighter jet pilot (don't laugh), he took me to Florida and walked me around the campus of Embry Riddle Areonautical Engineering School. He always told me I could do anything I set my mind to, he still does. Because of my parents teachings and also because of the way they lived their lives (they showed me not just told me that an education was important), not going to college was not an option for me.