Experiencing all 4 seasons in my journey towards becoming a speech pathologist - by Zainab Vaggie, 2009

  Spring

Nothings more beautiful than the first day of Spring, life blossoms from every crevice imaginable. This state of rejuvenation arouses life from even the oldest of trees, making them flourish with new life. Younger, more robust plants gaze in awe and wonder at these aged plants, would they be able to keep themselves so deeply rooted as to survive long Winters for these moments? What must be kept in mind though, is that even Spring has its chilli days… So I am a matriculate- going about my daily routines, enjoying high school, mxit on the side when mom’s not watching, television games in my spare time, hanging around with friends in the school garden when classes are cancelled, coming home to a warm plate of food and a wonderful comfy bed, Was that all I lived for?... It was almost time for me to make a huge decision…choosing my career path… excited just thinking of varsity life, the last time I checked the last thing that crossed my mind was another few years of torture, another few years of burning midnight oil studying, another few years of discipline, learning and determination… the last thing I needed in my life was going through another phase of foolishness, come on… do I choose a career that I’ve been passionate about for years (becoming a gynecologist) knowing full well that my grades would not meet the expected varsity requirements? Or do I choose something that has tickled my fancy for just the past few months… …the kind of field that always interested me was seeing the lives of thousands of people becoming more meaningful, giving them hope where hope had once been lost and simultaneously, seeing a positive growth in my personal being, and many futures prosper. Speech pathology!I must admit, I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that we could speak and hear, and I could never imagine how the lives of those who are unable to use their God given gift of their senses (due to circumstances) might have turned an upside down blow. You see… I loved talking, I was known as the schools ‘speech’ representative, whether it is at eistedford competitions, the matric dinner, speaking in assembly, at different community functions...  I was never afraid of talking in front of people… in fact, I enjoyed the few moments that I had addressing a large mass of people… It was an evening in mid June 2006, the middle of my matric year, that I actually realized the power of our senses…imagine a life without being able to ask questions? Or lives in which you cannot hear (naturally) the answers to those questions? Or imagine a life where the words came out eventually but you have this nagging fear of being mocked? This is why I chose audiology and speech pathology as my career path. We are in need of more speech therapists in our country, and it is sad to see the number of students that find interest in this element of the medical faculty. If there was one aim that I will never ever stop working towards: that would be putting a smile on the faces of those that never knew how to smile in the first place.Just in case I didn’t make the following clear, life wasn’t always a stream of bliss, as the pioneers (first matriculates) at Al-Azhar High School, we faced kitchens and passages as classrooms, we managed to survive water puddles, dusty pathways and muddy playgrounds. We also endured gang fighting in the Lotus River area which was a threat to our education. But Algamdulilaah, today I can proudly say that through it all, I have become a dedicated servant to our Creator the Almighty and it is with His Mercy and Grace that I have persevered and come this far.My matric year was now over; I had received a provisional acceptance from the University of Cape Town, University of the Western Cape and the University of Stellenbosch…  it was up to my final results whether I was fully accepted or not… my mind was set that if all went well I would go to the University of Cape Town which is also known to be one of the top Universities in the world… but the period from after my last exam paper to the date that our final results would be up seemed like ages… that feeling of knowing, yet not knowing whether I was fully accepted for speech pathology at UCT was tormenting… the fear of being turned down haunted me, but I had faith… I believed… I knew I worked hard to get in… yet… I set myself up for the worst… because, in case I didn’t get in, I didn’t want to crouch up in a corner and cry… so I looked at second and third options, perhaps going to the Universities of the Western Cape or Stellenbosh.  It was a bright sunny day in November… when I got a letter from the University of Cape Town… Oh my word…I’M ACCEPTED, I’M ACCEPTED I shouted! My heart raced faster and faster… I was the happiest person alive… I knew that what awaited me was four long years of hard work… and I was prepared, and still am prepared to give it my all…Ok…just a little more about the course: audiology and speech pathology… it is amongst the paramedical field, meaning that we work in close association with physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and sometimes even doctors… we could work in the hospital setting, at special schools, or even open our own private practice…well… the latter is one of my goals that I would like to see myself in perhaps in the next 10 to 15 years… all in all, the course is 4 years in length, by the end of the second year of study, we either specialize in audiology (working with hearing impaired people- hearing aids and so fourth) or speech pathology (working with people who stutter, people who cannot speak after a stroke, children with speech delay, autism and so on)… I always knew from the very beginning that I would specialize in speech pathology, but it was good to know that there were two streams or fields we could go into in the communication sciences field. So first year campus was awaiting (2007), and spring had me Sprung… I was full of emotion… wasn’t sure what to expect… I guess its’ only normal when one doesn’t know exactly how we feeling… you know… people say its best to go into something knowing full well what you getting into… but for me and campus… I think ‘not knowing’ just made life all the more exciting… so let us see what winter had in store ...

Autumn

The most lifeless season in the year, nothing grows, nothing flourishes, and nothing should. A seed planted at the beginning of these desolate times usually has little or no hope of ever surviving. What if I told you that seed survived? If I told you that it grew larger than anyone could have imagined, would you believe me? Sometimes the impossible becomes possible, with just the right amount of sunshine……It was just before we started our course when I went for shadowing of speech pathology, here I watched trained and qualified speech therapists in action… and there was one story… one incident… that I will never ever forget… There was a young man, round about 18, who stuttered heavily while speaking… and the speech therapist was speaking to him, it seemed like some sort of counselling session because the therapist asked him some personal questions about his life, their conversation went something like this:Do not consider the following extract to be accurate- Speech therapist: do you have a girlfriend at the moment?Boy (stuttering): yyyyessss, I ddo havvve a gir…girlllffffriend, bbut wwwhen I aam wwith her, I ddon’t speak allot wwhen her fffriends are around -  I dddon’t wwwanna eeembbarrass her.  Speech therapist: I’m sure she doesn’t feel that way, you are a wonderful person and I’m sure she would tell everyone that!Boy (stuttering): Yyyes, I know th_that she thththinks I am wwonderfful, but s_sometttimes I feel th_that she dddoesn’t llove me… I mmean, w_who would llove s_someone that s_ssstutters!   Speech therapist: of cause people love you… it doesn’t mean that if you stutter people will not love you, what is inside is what matters, and I’m sure that your girlfriend loves you for who you are… Boy (stuttering): I hhope sso, I gggot a gift for yyou… Speech therapist: a gift? <smiling>Boy (stuttering): yyes… I wrote you a pppoem tt_to th_thank yyou ff_for every_ything yyou hhave d_done ff_or me!(At this point of the conversation the boy read a poem that he has written himself for the speech therapist, it was a page long, and very touching…the room went quiet… it was just the boy and his poem… but there was one thing that brought tears to both the speech therapist and my eyes… while reciting the poem, the BOY DID NOT STUTTER ONCE)This experience had taught me a lot, the way in which that speech therapist has made an impact in that boys life was amazing…and that was when I knew that I had made the right decision in choosing my career choice… because I always wanted to make a difference in any individuals life… from this same experience I’ve learnt that despite the hardships and difficulties- there are always people suffering far worst than us… it is important that we need to be tolerant and be satisfied with what we have… and it is this that drove me to implement the one responsibility of humanity…

Caring for one's neighbour

So… let me give a brief overview of my first year on medical campus… it was the first day when we were given various talks as an introduction to the course… there was a period in which all the students in our stream could sit in the garden and get to know each other, and simultaneously listen to what the students a year ahead of us had to say as advice to us. This was exciting… I was now looking forward to a fruitful year, knowing full well that it was not going to be easy. In the first week, most of us were unsure of where our next lecture would be, and while the rest of the students would sit outside and wait for some miracle to help get them into a classroom, I took the initiative to go and find a lecturer, or some of the admin staff to assist us on where to go next… I think this is probably what led to my appointment as class representative that year, in which the students felt that I was one of the best candidates to fulfill that role. I tried my best to perform that duty with dignity and aplomb… and I have! …but it was hard… because the workload seemed like it was tripled since our matric year, the assignments became more and more…there was the pressure of deciding between class representative meetings and my coursework…was I ready to take on such a great responsibility and I didn’t even know what campus life was like? I was always the type that loved challenges, so I had to take everything that came to me with a pinch of salt… I had to start on my assignments and coursework way ahead of time so that I didn’t lag behind when something else cropped up… I was the friendly, jovial, always happy type… but this didn’t affect my goal- to study, work hard and be determined to reach the top… I was never easily influenced, but to all of you who doesn’t know… there wasn’t much bunking on medical campus J… when you get to the front gate: some people would view it as quiet and very peaceful… others would think that there are just a bunch of bookworms and nerds that one will most probably find researching a 798 page anatomy book in the library… but those of us who are there… who comes from there…we know when there is time for laughter, and we know when it is time to work… and I promise that once you all get to university yourselves (medical campus), you will all echo my words…I can’t say the same for upper campus though… haha… on upper campus I guess we find all sorts… bunking is a fashion, mini skirts, rings in the ears-nose & belly, hair is sprayed blue or purple with somewhat of an awkward Mohawk- with that tight leather jackets-we find all of that… but you know what… that never phased me, and it shouldn’t you either… if there is one thing I can say… for university life you have to be strong… you have to be steadfast on what you came there for… You know, people always said that when one gets to University, you are nothing but a number… I wish to argue that statement by saying… University life is what you make of it!!! Perhaps I was fortunate to have had a small close knit class, perhaps I was lucky to have had some caring lecturers, but there is one thing I can guarantee… your personality, your attitude… that is what shapes you… that is what makes you either a little ‘something’ or like people always said, just a number that nobody knows! I didn’t tell you what a normal average day is like at campus did I? err… let me think… I get to varsity at about 8am on average; have my first lectures in old main building Groote Schuur, at about 10 45am our lectures end in Old Main and we have to be at Upper campus,  yep… 15 minutes to get there… eish… so we walk down hospital street back to medical campus, to grab a shuttle… sometimes the shuttle is late, or we just missed the bus… then we resultantly lose lecture time on upper campus… we get to upper at about 11 15… we have lectures there for approximately two hours… almost no break… immediately after we have to go all the way back to medical campus for another lecture or two… so yeah… sounds stressful, by the time we get to each class we need time to rejuvenate ourselves… nope… I’m not complainingJ … I know it may seem like it… but there is no use complaining now, I made my bed and I guess I have to lay in it… haha. Little did I know… that I made a bed that required a bucket full of bravery, a room full of courage and a house full of strength… because after all… the next few weeks really required it ...                                                                                                                                                               

Winter

Winter is the hardest time for any crop, let alone one freshly planted. Older, wiser plants would look down in doubt upon something with so little experience brought into this harsh world. If there’s something that the older generations underestimate, it’s the power of hope, the power of a young heart, determined. The power of naivety, too, can sometimes outlast itself until experience catches up. Irony at its best…So to this point things were going great… till I felt the storm slowly catching up with me… were things getting too much suddenly? Was I truly going to give up towards the end of my first year because I felt I just couldn’t handle it all anymore? NOOOOOOO!  That was not Zainabs’ personality… or was it? <gulp>… the fear of abruptly realizing that 2 assignments was due this week and 2 the following week, with 2 major tests weighted 30% each, plus final exams shortly approaching… it is not that I never worked consistently, it was merely the pressure of trying to keep up… tears filled my eyes day in and day out expecting the worst… sometimes sleepless nights was the key to ensure that I would be ok… I never gave up… but I was never one to receive a supplementary for a class test the way I did in first semester… I couldn’t go through another phase of uncertainty… don’t get me wrong, my grades were good to this point, but even just a lousy 45% for a single class test earlier in the year gave me a wake up call… I rewrote that test and received a better grade… but I didn’t want to spend another year redoing courses because I never worked hard enough… so that wake up call had me working to the bone… but at the same time that feeling of fear, and agony, that feeling that I may not have worked hard enough haunted me… there were other things in my life that also seemed to take a U-turn and all this added up… it left me seriously wondering whether I was worth the fight… I remember me sitting in one of my lecturers’ offices one day and discussing my future, brainstorming ways of improving my grades, I may have been complimented by doing a great job as class representative, communicating well with staff and students, but surely, this was not going to make me pass the year was it? Being the type of person I am, it didn’t require courage to go up to a lecturer and say “Look, I’m in trouble, I need some advice”… I always took matters into my own hands… but what really took courage was trying to get out of that dark hole I suddenly found myself in… Summer may have been coming, better times too, but Mother Nature should never be underestimated, she’s not exactly known for her predictability (No mother is)…these past few months has brought some distance and doubt…but these next few months will hopefully bring assurance and conviction, …What did I have in me that could possibly be able to stand up to such monstrosities, monstrosities that I have never faced before …