It's fun to realize you started out having no clue what you were doing.

I'm in the midst of some late spring cleaning¹ today, and while going through an old file box I found a file dedicated to old notes from immediately after I graduated with my Bachelor's degree. I enjoyed a brief year and a half stint as a Speech-Language Pathology Apprentice, before going to graduate school. At the time, I was thrilled to have the chance to do real therapy. And now, with the power of 20/20 hindsight, plus a Master's degree and now my CCCs, I realize now just how little I knew at the time.

I wouldn't change my experience for the world, of course, because we all have to start somewhere, right? And here's one of the first objectives I ever wrote (please note that as a SLPA, I was not allowed to write goals; however, I wrote them as practice in my notes, to try to get an idea of how to do things):

• 2-3 step directions: follow with as little help as possible.
• Given target words and pictures of increasing complexity, student will formulate complete, grammatical sentences.
• Produce /sh/ sounds and /s/ blends in all word positions at sentence level (structured activities) with 80% accuracy.

Good thing I learned how to write in grad school. Sure, I drove my first clinic supervisor crazy, but to her credit I now know how to take the vocabulary I clearly knew and really make it work for me. Though I'm doing my best to minimize the things I keep, I think I'll hang on to these. It'll be nice to stop every once in a while and see just how much I've grown.

¹ Better late than never, I suppose.