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From:
Date: 11 Oct 2006
Time: 19:40:40 -0500
Remote Name: 71.246.249.140
Thanks, Kristi! Wow, that’s a tough question, partly because there are a lot of different answers. I was fortunate that I had parents that were very supportive. They got me into speech therapy early, and they also recognized that I was academically oriented and helped me go to college and grad school. I’d always had the goal of getting a PhD, and even with some failures and setbacks along the way, I plugged along and eventually got there. I never let stuttering hold me back from anything (other than perhaps acting!). I knew I had to teach in grad school, and although I put it off for a while with a research assistantship, I finally bit the bullet and did it. After all of my schooling was done, I found myself stuck in a dead end job for many years. I stayed there longer than I should have because it took me a while to shake myself out of the rut it was in and actually push hard to find a new job. I kept holding myself back from making cold calls and doing what was necessary to assert myself to make the right contacts. So what finally ended up working was applying for the right job at the right time, in a place where I had the right contacts and the right experience. Sometimes I think that I got my job purely because of luck – the stars aligned and I found a job opening in the office where I had contacts and experience, and just happened to be the most qualified applicant. But I recently heard a National Geographic photographer say that it’s not luck that puts him in the right place at the right time to snap the shutter to get the perfect shot, but it’s research and planning and patience and tenacity that puts him in the right place at the right time. To get the right job, you need to do the work, conduct the background research, make the contacts, make the cold calls, polish the resume, and keep on searching so that you can finally be in the right place at the right time when the right job opens up, and you’re ready to snap the shutter! (Wow that was corny, but I like it!)