Freedom of Expression

What is your name and what do you do?

My name’s Pae. I’m doing a gap year right now before my Master’s in Speech and Language Pathology.

How did you get into pursuing Speech and Language Pathology?

I used to do theater, and then I did public speaking and debate. And I also majored in Psychology, so it just kind of seemed like the marriage of all the things that I was interested to do, and it’s really meaningful work, so I’m very excited to start. Yeah!

Very cool! And where do you see yourself in 5 years after you go through your Master’s? Where do you think you want to go?

I hope to be working in pediatric speech therapy, working with kids with special needs.

Why kids with special needs in particular?

When I was majoring in Psychology, I specialised in developmental psychology and worked with kids with special needs, so that’s where it started. And then, I guess, I tried to unite it with my part-time work, which wasteaching debate and public speaking to kids. It  just made sense.

I see. What’s one significant memory of working with a kid that has stayed with you? 

There was a kid that I worked with who was completely non-verbal at  2 years old, which was really strange, and it was mainly because his mum didn’t talk to him at home. I thought that was really sad. When I was working with him, I thought, “Oh, there’s so much more we could be doing for them.”

This boy didn’t even technically have special needs, he just had express speech delay because his parents weren’t really paying attention to him at home. I thought that was really sad, and I wanted to do as much as I could to help him be able to grow up normally and learn to express himself.

That’s meaningful. We’d like to talk about your outfit now. How did you curate your jewelry today? 

I really love the ocean, so all my jewelry is waterproof. I try and make sure it’s something that I can go anywhere in or sweat and work out in. I’m going for dance tonight as well—I do West Coast swing.