u/Sans-Soucy

Hi all!

I currently work as an SLPA and am working toward my master’s degree in CSD. I love languages and speak three fluently: English, Spanish, and French. I can also speak some Italian and Portuguese.

For those of you who are also interested in languages and are in the field of speech therapy (or on your way there), what are your plans?

Do you have a particular setting in mind? Would you like to work in a private practice focused specifically on language? What age groups do you think would be best to work with if you want to have this type of focus? And what do you do to maintain the languages you speak?

Sorry for all the questions! My cohort is lovely, but there are only a handful of us who speak more than one language, and even fewer who are interested in focusing on language.

I’d love to hear from anyone who has taken a similar path or has thoughts on how to incorporate multilingualism into a career in speech-language pathology.

Thank you!

Nobody talks about how the next girl gets the ring.

My ex and I dated for nearly five years. The relationship was toxic, and the breakup was messy. So I wasn’t all that surprised when I heard he was seeing someone else.

I convinced myself she was a rebound and that he was using her to get over me. Only… that wasn’t the case. Or, if it was, it changed. He developed real feelings for her and eventually got engaged.

What nobody talks about is how much it sucks to be the first girlfriend—especially when you were with someone for a long time.

The next girl, if she’s smart, can put two and two together. He liked enough about you to stay with you for years, but he also figured out exactly what he didn’t like: X, Y, and Z. Then she gets the benefit of all that information. She keeps the qualities he loved, avoids the things he hated, and essentially becomes a version of you that’s been optimized to better fit him.

I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I genuinely think this is part of the reason people say, “The next girl gets the ring.”

He told her about you. The good, the bad, and the ugly. She got the heads-up. She got the lessons learned from your relationship.

And you were the lab rat.

I recently bumped into an ex for the first time since we broke up, and luckily, I don’t think he saw me.

It was a crowded outdoor event, and I had a cap and sunglasses on—lucky me. I was far enough away to turn around and go in the other direction, but unlucky enough to get a good glimpse of him and his new girlfriend.

Seeing him smiling and holding hands with his really pretty girlfriend made me feel sick. Thank goodness I was with a good friend who helped me pull myself together. I ended up leaving the event early, and now I feel so childish for doing that.

I don’t dislike him, and I definitely don’t dislike her. Still, it hurt. I don’t know how he moved on so quickly. I can’t even imagine being with someone new right now.

I guess I just wasn’t prepared for how much it would affect me to see him happy with someone else.