September 27th, 2017

Post date: Oct 17, 2017 8:13:10 PM

We had a very nice meeting last night although we couldn't get to grab the quiet corner in Dysart's. We had six PWS (Michael, Marybeth, Shaleen, Natalie, Erin & Ravi). We started catching up with each others as usual. 

Michael talked about a difficult phone call, one of those difficult ones to customer service reps who are hard to understand and who apparently couldn't understand Mike either and kept asking for repeats! Since marijuana is now (or will be) legal in Maine, we discussed a bit about what it's affect may be on stuttering and that lots of information on internet about it. We were sorry to hear that Jane's back is still bothering her and we missed her. Marybeth told us that she has been answering questions about her life sent to her by her kids, who are making a "family book". She's realizing that she's never opened up to her kids about her stuttering as she has in the past few months. For example, one question's answer was that her "best achievement in life" has been to accept her stuttering and to take on the risks and challenges that life presents. Natalie talked about challenges she faces while communicating with her colleagues at work, yet she seems to stutter more when she's more comfortable! Shaleen says his audience (students) is very attentive and listens very carefully to him. Erin is renewing her challenge (to herself) of being more fluent while reading out loud to her students. But she advertises to her third grade class, and so they don't really respond to her stuttering in any event!

Both Natalie and Ravi agreed that not doing 'Speech Exercises' makes their speech more difficult, and wish they'd remember to practice. Other topics included discussion about genetic factors in stuttering and ordering food in restaurant/stores. We really don't need to get afraid while ordering food because 'Customer is ALWAYS RIGHT'. :-) 

We also talked about the possibility of organizing a mini conference in Maine in Spring 2018 so that it is little ahead of the annual summer conference which may help us get more people attend the mini conference. Our last mini conference, Sept. 2016, was very successful. People attended from all the way up to Connecticut/Rhode Island attended it. In addition, we felt that our dream is to have at least two people from our group attend the NSA annual conference so that we have a 'Maine Representation' there. Good news is that NSA annual conference scholarships can be easily earned by those who haven't attended one yet. So, if you haven't been to an annual conference, you might want to apply for scholarship to reduce your expenses.