My Career

During my senior year of high school, I acquired a job as a gymnastics coach. As a gymnastics instructor, I worked with children, teaching them various gymnastics skills. I enjoyed seeing the bright smiles on my athletes' faces when they achieved a new skill. The great pride that I felt when they would tap me 101 times to show me what they were working on, “Coach Kaliyah, Coach Kaliyah, Coach Kaliyah!” In my eyes, children are the future, and they carry so much greatness and potential inside of them. My after-school part-time job exposed me to the world of working with children, and it was so rewarding every day. This is how I knew that I had a passion for working with children. Before I started my job, I felt overwhelmed with the idea of choosing a major and career that best fit me. As a result, I began to research a career path that would allow me to do what I was passionate about. Eventually, I came across speech pathology, and I was fascinated by the many different branches in this field. 

As I continued researching the speech pathology field, I felt compelled to explore the developmental and pediatric aspects of it. Early intervention quickly caught my attention. This part of speech pathology links both of these ideals. This is what I plan to pursue in my future. Assessing and creating a plan to aid babies and young children who have trouble with speech development is what this career consists of. In addition, I am interested in travel speech pathology, which would allow me to assist children from all over the country. In order to pursue this career, I will have to obtain a bachelor's degree in speech and hearing sciences and a master's degree in order to practice. A long-term goal that I have is to receive a PhD in speech pathology. I hope to become a professor in the future and educate undergraduate or graduate students. I want to be able to conduct research that will expand the speech pathology field, and with a PhD, this is even more possible. 

I understand that graduate school is highly competitive, so I will need to separate myself from other applicants. Furthermore, I will continue to take classes that pertain to my major. I recently joined the National Student Speech-Language Hearing Association (NSSLHA) organization at the University of Illinois. It is an organization for aspiring speech pathologists to gain more knowledge about the field and to work hands-on with professionals. Shadowing a speech-language pathologist would also put me on the right track to gaining real-world experience. I plan to minor in something of my interest. Some interests that correlate to my major and career path are child development, Spanish, and psychology. These steps will allow me to get into a prestigious graduate school and will make me stand out from other applicants. 

When I think about my future work environment, I see passion. I want to be passionate about the work and assistance that I am doing. A work-life balance is crucial to the life that I want to live. For me, this means working in a playful, less competitive, and low stress environment. In fact, I work best in an environment that is welcoming, peaceful, and stress-free. 

Two fields that have always intrigued me were the forensics field and the healthcare field. I took a forensics course in high school, and I also listen to multiple true crime podcasters in my free time. If I were to pick a career in that direction, I would look into being a forensics psychologist or a detective. One of my favorite classes in high school was psychology. I am thoroughly interested in the way the human mind works. Through this field, I would be able to study the minds of many criminals, which I think is very captivating. As for being a detective, I have such a skill for intuition and problem solving, which are great qualities to have as a detective. Some of my other skills include empathy, detail orientation, and resilience. With that being said, if life were to not take me in the direction of speech pathology, I would also look into being a chiropractor. In order to become a chiropractor, I would need to get my bachelor's degree in any science. I would most likely choose kinesiology. I would then need to become a Doctor of Chiropractic, which is a four-year postgraduate program. As a child, I visited many chiropractors for my back and always found the career so fascinating. I am so enthusiastic about my future, whichever way it takes me!