This week we get to learn about Becky! Becky is in the Audiology program here at JMU and she has an amazing story.
Hi! My name is Becky and I am a first year AuD student, but I’m also the oldest in the program. I graduated from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro in 2009 with a B.S. in Deaf Education. It was always my intention to go out and get some “real world” experience before entering a graduate program. After 5 years as a teacher for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, I decided to pursue graduate school. I applied to JMU’s audiology program and was wait listed and ultimately didn’t get in. I continued teaching students with multiple disabilities for a few more years and that further fueled my desire to pursue audiology because I saw many kids whose hearing and language development were viewed as minor issues compared to their other disabilities, but as soon as they were given accessible language through amplification and/or manual communication, their lives were vastly improved. As a teacher I found myself putting band-aid solutions on big problems like language deprivation and I figured that as an audiologist I could address it more pro-actively. I decided to apply to JMU’s audiology program again, except it was more complicated because in the 6 years since I last applied, I had gotten married and had two children. Because of my husband’s job, he could not follow me to school and because of difficulty finding childcare, neither could my kids. Luckily, I have an amazingly supportive spouse who encouraged me to pursue my passion, and so I drive home (3.5 hours away) almost every weekend. It is not easy, but there is no “one-size-fits-all” path that everyone has to take. If I had gone to school immediately after undergrad, I would not have pursued audiology. I needed those years of experience to figure out what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it.
