I have been giving a lot of thought over the last couple of years about a professional blog. I must admit that I have never really gotten into reading SLP blogs or listening to SLP podcasts. Much of that has to do with how homogenous the ones I have come across have seemed to me. I don’t look like any SLP blogger I’ve seen and I don’t feel like I sound like any of them either. I don’t have a favorite way to teach “r”, I’m sarcastic, and I spend most of my time in my head. More than once I have wondered to myself if I should start my own blog, but then all of my insecurities would keep me from following through. “Why would my blog be any different than the ones out there?” “Who would even want to read it?” “Do I have anything important to say?”

During the first few weeks of my Digital Literacies class, I started to seriously revisit this blogging idea, because I made myself honestly and soberly answer the question, “What do you want to achieve with this SLPD degree?” My knee-jerk response was that I want to educate people – colleagues, parents, friends, strangers. I want to be a resource. I don’t want to sell anything. I don’t want to commodify my knowledge to “influence” the field. I want to help. I want to be a part of a community that helps. I see value in the wide range of SLPs we have…I would be remiss if I didn’t see the whole mosaic of what other SLPs offer. But I want to be sure that I know WHO I AM and WHAT I BRING. I’m not for everyone. And that’s good.

There is not much diversity in our field, and I believe that blogging to amplify the beautifully diverse voices (even the sarcastic ones) can propel the field of speech language pathology into having a more relevant presence in the world. We give people a voice. That’s our job. Why wouldn’t we use our own voices to spread the SLP gospel? Blogging is a relevant platform for influence. I believe that if we have the conviction for it, we should use that platform to make ourselves known and to broadcast our knowledge to the larger world around us. We bring something to the table. We quite literally help give language to thought. I believe it’s time to take our seat at the table.

I guess the cat’s out of the bag. I started a blog.