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From:
Date: 19 Oct 2006
Time: 19:26:28 -0500
Remote Name: 71.246.249.140
Thanks for your post. I’m pleased to hear that that my article has been useful for discussions! That’s a tough question. I think that our disabilities shape us, our personalities, our goals, our ambitions, and they can certainly drive us either toward or away from certain professions. There are certainly many people who decided to become SLPs or researchers in the field because of their stuttering. There are others who may have a certain amount of drive that comes from their desire to prove the doubters wrong, or to prove their own doubts wrong. But for me, I think in many ways I am where I am because of factors outside of my stuttering. That is, I think my drive comes from other things. And perhaps because my stuttering is more mild and I’ve been covert for a long time it doesn’t influence me as much as it may others. But I think my current choice of career has definitely been influenced by my stuttering. It’s certainly made me more compassionate and more interested in the helping professions. So when I say that I am where I am ‘because of’ my stuttering, it’s because I may never have been interested in working in the disability field if it hadn’t been for my personal experiences.