How To Become A Speech Therapist #2

In my last ‘How To Become A Speech Therapist” post I told you about introduction camp. But that wasn’t the first thing that happened on my journey to becoming a speech therapist. The first thing was the most nerve wrecking experience of my life: the voice test. If you’re interested in finding out what happened, make sure you keep on reading!

I knew it from the day I knew I wanted to become a speech therapist: I had to do to the voice test. The voice test is a test in which they take a look at your voice and what you’re capable of and then they decide whether your voice is good enough to become a speech therapist or not.

Even though I knew I had to do it and it was best to do it soon, I kind of tried to procrastinate doing it. I dreaded that day like no other. Everyone said that it wasn’t some sort of audition for The Voice. But to be completely honest with you guys, it did feel like I was doing a miserable job at auditioning for Idols.

The test took place at the school I was supposed to go to after summer. It was quite a small school, but confusing as hell. I had never been there before so I had no clue where to go. I asked the lady at the reception where I had to be, and she told me I had to go to the third floor.

I walked to the hallway and there it was, my first bad decision. Should I take the stairs or the elevator? I decided to be healthy and take the stairs. You might think that that was a good idea, but trust me, I regretted right when I started walking. I’m not the most sporty girl in the world and I had to climb up 6 stairs! When I finally managed to get to the third floor I was exhausted. I knew one thing for sure: never again. Next time I’m taking the elevator.

When I got to the third floor I realised I was way too early, as usual. I decided to sit down and read through the book I was going to read once more, but what I didn’t know was that the thing I thought I had to practise, wasn’t what I was supposed to be practising.

During the voice test they look at a few things:

• The quality of your voice
• The quality of your singing voice
• Articulation
• If you’re capable of improvement

What I didn’t know was that articulation didn’t mean pronouncing every single letter of a word correctly. It means that you have to move your lips, tongue and jaw correctly, which is something I don’t usually do. So I went in, read my book and felt pretty confident about myself. When everyone read their part the ‘judge’ gave everyone a letter they had to improve on and you had to show that you were capable of that. Because I was so confident about my articulation I thought she’d have no letter for me, but once she got to me I was proved wrong. She actually told me I had quite a lot of letters to improve on.

The next part was singing. You had to sing a song in front of 6 other aspiring speech therapist and ‘the judge’. I decided to sing a children’s song, just to keep it simple. Again I thought it went quite okay, but during my performance I heard some of the other girls giggle a bit, which made me more and more nervous.

The last part was the most terrible one for me. The ‘judge’ sung a tone and you had to copy that. For some reason I’m just incapable of that and it ended up going terribly.

So when we all got out of the room and stood in the hallway waiting for the results, I started getting nervous. I hadn’t thought of what I would do if this speech therapist thing wasn’t going to work out. And just when I thought I couldn’t get any more nervous one of the girls standing there with me who did this for the second time told us that only 3 out of the 7 girls in her group actually passed back when she did it for the first time. Well, that’s great.

And there it was, the moment of truth. One by one everyone got called in to hear the good (or bad) news. All the girls before me passed, so I was quite sure I wasn’t going to since I thought there had to be a few who didn’t pass too. I went inside shaking but ready to hear whatever the ‘judge’ was going to tell me. It’s no big deal, there are lots of other great studies out there, I though to myself.

To my surprise the ‘judge’ actually told me I passed. It wasn’t like a “you’re amazing you have nothing to improve on” pass, but it was a pass and that was all that mattered to me.

And that’s how I passed the voice test. I still don’t know why they let me pass cause there are so many things I’m not as good at as the other girls in my class, but all of that doesn’t matter anymore. I’m going to be a speech therapist!

XOXO, Nicole.