Jennifer Wallace

Background

About Jennifer Wallace

When I was 11 years old my mom went deaf, and she saw a speech pathologist to learn to read lips. This was my first experience with the field of speech pathology. Because she was a long-term cancer survivor, I had spent most of my childhood watching her endure one medical problem after another. This gave me a lot of sympathy for people going through similar experiences and led me to want to help others who face difficult challenges in life. I also learned about communication challenges during the three years I volunteered with an organization serving children with autism. From my junior year of high school through my freshman year of college I worked with a group of volunteers who got together with autistic children at a local restaurant and gave them the experience of talking to strangers and interacting in the real world away from their parents. I learned to identify with these children and their struggles, and ever since then I have hoped to one day help other children with communication problems, regardless of their specific diagnosis. My senior year of high school I took a dual credit EMT class. On top of normal classes during the week, this involved Saturday classes, 60 hours of working in an ambulance, with up to 16-hour shifts, and 20 hours of working in the hospital. I took patients’ vitals, checked blood sugar levels, and accompanied patients through the crisis of transport to the hospital. For the past four years I have worked as a transporter at Providence while pursuing my studies full-time at Baylor. My job at the hospital has given me experience interacting with patients during their hospital stay and at discharge, working with medical personnel, and training four coworkers. Much of the focus of my Baylor studies was on helping young children, and I had many opportunities to observe speech pathologists at work in early education settings. I look forward to learning more about the school-based speech pathologist assistant position.