Learn It All – Absorb It All
“I won’t use it anyways”, I said to myself in a second-year pediatric audiology course. I’m reflecting back on this now (seven years later) as I sit at the hospital and wait for my next patient, a 17 month old child, to check-in for his appointment.
In graduate school, I cared about my grades and I cared deeply for the topics that interested me most, but I can’t promise that I was fully absorbing the knowledge that I self-deemed to be “not applicable”. For my first two years in graduate school I was absolutely sure I would be a cochlear implant audiologist. By my last two years in the program I had obviously wised up enough to know that my real calling was vestibular sciences. Either way, pediatrics just was not for me.
My career so far has proven that hindsight is sharper than foresight. So where did my area of expertise land? I spend a large amount of time with hearing aid patients. I am a clinical preceptor to externs. I provide inpatient services to pediatric and adult patients and do sedated auditory brainstem response evaluations in the operating room. I have dabbled in bone conduction research. And I am currently providing temporary coverage to a heavily-pediatric based outpatient clinic. Every minute of my career has brought me joy and I am so grateful for the flexibility my audiology license provides.
My point here is this – you truly have no clue where you’ll apply your education. Maybe you’ll do exactly what you think you will for your entire career. But what if you don’t? What if you find you have another skill set, make a mid-career specialty switch, or take a new job with a different population?
Absorb it all, and use these years in school wisely. To learn more about audiology career paths, check out the SAA Blog’s “Becoming a ____ Audiologist” series or network at the AAA Annual Conference. A diverse externship experience is another way to experience different specialties. No matter how you do it, grab every opportunity to learn – whether “applicable” or not.
Sarah Ostlie, AuD, F-AAA, CCC-A
SAA Advisory Committee Chair
Related Posts
March 2022 Advisors Corner
It’s Conference Season! I don’t know about you, but I am STOKED to see everyone at the AAA 2022+HearTECH Expo in St. Louis, Missouri, March 30-April 2, 2022! The AAA annual conference is a magical time filled with new knowledge and old friends. But for many of you, this may be your first experience with…
January 2022 Advisors Corner
Job Search On the Mind? I’m sitting here at work and one of our clinic’s externs is sitting next to me feverishly scrolling through job postings. A friend texts about a new fitness class. My email pings as a student I know asks a question about her CV for an externship application. The calendar has…
September 2021 Advisors Corner
New (academic) year, same incredible you! This year, students are a different breed; you have balanced schoolwork, clinic schedules, and personal lives all while adapting to the dynamically changing world of a global pandemic. Take a pause and really give yourself credit for that accomplishment. Now as we flip the calendar page to a new…