I have been helping others communicate since I was a child. Raised by Mexican, immigrant parents, we spoke Spanish in the home. The fact that I attended a bilingual elementary school, however, rapidly turned me into the most accomplished speaker of English in the family, and from that point on, from about 7 years old, I have served my mother as a translator. This is not at all uncommon among immigrant families. To this day, it is a struggle for my mother to communicate in English and I continue to help her as much as I can. This was the earliest factor that I have identified which set the stage for my chosen career in Communication, as a speech pathologist and therapist.
The biggest inspiration, however, was the fact that my younger sister was born with ankyloglossia and had difficulties speaking. She had a stutter, a small lexicon for her age and produced many articulation errors in Spanish. My parents were completely unaware of her congenital condition at the time and believed she was refusing to use complete sentences and spoke like a “baby” because she wanted attention. My parents eventually expressed their concerns to the pediatrician and my sister was referred to a speech language pathologist and began receiving speech therapy services. I was able to join the therapy sessions a few times and what stood out to me the most was the relationship of trust that the therapist formed with my sister in such a short amount of time. I remember my sister being terrified of other doctors and dentists, but it was different with her speech pathologist. She looked forward to her therapy sessions. These days, she is the most talkative out of all my sisters.
As a research professional at the University of Minnesota, I worked on a study that examined the relationship between early environmental stressors and later cardiometabolic diseases in children from low-income homes. Approximately forty percent of our sample were native speakers of Spanish. Thus, I was able to connect with the participants on a personal level. We ensured that participants felt comfortable and learned to gain their trust, asking sensitive questions regarding income, racial/ethnic discrimination, depression, and food insecurity. I learned that working with participants requires patience and empathy as every individual is unique and has diverse needs. Some of the parents we worked with were illiterate. As part of our protocol, we would read every survey question and response option aloud to the child’s parent in their preferred language. We learned to adjust our communication style by slowing down, speaking louder, or repeating ourselves, to make it easier for them to understand us. It took anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to get through the entire survey. When a participant would thank me for being patient with them, such joy, fully harnessing my abilities to the service of communication. I now keenly look forward to a long and highly productive career as an SLP professional, giving my all to the communication of my clients.
I love working with individuals of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, and socioeconomic levels, all with diverse needs and skills, focusing on those individuals with atypical development. In addition to my research experience, I had the opportunity to live abroad in Spain and teach English to young children. I volunteered at my university’s children's hospital for a few years where I interacted with children admitted in the intensive care unit and their siblings. I realized through these different experiences that I found immense joy working in small group settings, especially one-on-one, because this allowed me to focus my attention on the student. It is extremely rewarding to see their improvement over time and the sustainable impact that one can make in the life of another. I love diversity as much as learning and having the flexibility to work with individuals in different settings. Whether I am working in a school, hospital or doing research, I adapt to each individual and make it a point to learn from them. In each of the settings in which I have worked, the client has always been the top priority. I place a remarkably high value on teamwork, and multidisciplinary approaches, working alongside other professionals with the common goal of helping everyone to reach their fullest potential.
My Phonetics class taught me a great deal about communication differences across languages and dialects and phonemes in other languages that monolingual English speakers cannot detect because do not exist in English. I also learned about skills that I did not even know I had. Transcribing came naturally to me, and I was able to notice sounds that some of my monolingual, English-speaking classmates had a challenging time hearing. These are important skills to have, especially as a bilingual speech pathologist and therapist. I feel strongly that a bilingual SLP should be specialized and able to provide support to the child in their native language. I am thankful that I have the potential to help both English and Spanish speakers with communication differences or disorders. There are not enough bilingual English/Spanish speech therapists to meet America’s growing need in this area. As the Hispanic population continues to mushroom in the United States, we need to accommodate the needs of those individuals as well. I am pleased that I have the added advantage of also being fully bicultural, as well as bilingual. I understand the issues faced by bilingual children in our community.
Currently, I am a research coordinator at ____ University Medical Center where I coordinate three different projects. I have been a part of these projects from study initiation, working to stimulate recruitment and data collection. Over the years, I have become better at multitasking, as I have had the responsibility of coordinating distinct aspects of each study. My keen attention to detail and excellent listening skills have also been useful in research and professional experiences thus far. We put together audio recordings for our stimuli and administer language and cognitive assessments to children who have normal hearing, comparing responses with those of children who are deaf or hard of hearing. It is imperative to have excellent listening skills, especially now that we have yet one more communication barrier: face masks. In my current projects, I am learning about the impacts of face masks on literacy development in children who have normal hearing, in comparison to children who are deaf or hard of hearing, and how background noise affects preschool-aged children's ability to acquire novel words. In addition to working full time, I have been excelling in my coursework for graduate school, especially because I have been able to integrate my professional and academic responsibilities.
I am thankful to my parents for not allowing me to forget my native language, as being bilingual is as important to me professionally as it is personally. SLP is the field in which my research background has been focused, it is my vehicle for the exploration of science, and it is the context of my professional endeavors. I look forward to staying engaged with research in SLP for the balance of my professional lifetime, particularly with respect to the study of assessment tools as well as treatment methods. It is also especially important for me to help children with communication differences or disorders that result from a child’s neural plasticity; since the earlier the problem is addressed, the better the outcome. I would also like to raise awareness in the Hispanic community regarding communication disorders. Many families do not seek help and those who do often have trouble finding resources. My goal is to contribute to the dismantling of communication barriers in my community, to the extent to which I am able.
Thank you for considering my application.
SLP Personal Statement of Purpose Examples
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