“You’re the Expert (Even When You Don’t Feel Like One)”

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Transcript of “You’re the Expert (Even When You Don’t Feel Like One)” – Bright Conversations Podcast

Hello, and welcome to this episode of Bright Conversations. My name is Lisa Kathman, and I will be introducing our amazing guest in just a moment. But first, wanted to start out to say that this episode of Bright Conversations is brought to you by the 2025 Speech Sound Disorders series, which is a fresh, evidence-based look at how we treat speech sound disorders today. And it's featuring some amazing speakers. That you will not want to miss out on.

Dr. Kelly Farquharson and Dr. Sharynne McLeod, who is the one that broke the internet. She talks about this in one of the courses, when those new quote-unquote norms came out for speech sound acquisition. So, that conference will dive into practical and up-to-date strategies for everything from R therapy to, um, assessment.

Um, all of those sessions are available now, and will be on demand through December 31st. So, enough with the housekeeping stuff, let's welcome our guest today. I am so excited to have Sam Walker here today, who is a creator I'm sure you are, um. Familiar with. She is funny, she has amazing graphics, she sells all the cool merch.

So, Sam, thank you so much for joining. Me today here for this convo. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat about all of this fun stuff. Well, it's funny, so I reached out, and I immediately thought of you when we were thinking about who could we have on that would kind of connect in with speech sound disorders?

And when I first asked, I didn't ask with what was in my brain, because why I immediately connected with you is you do a lot of work supporting. Graduate students, new graduates, and around that whole idea of imposter syndrome. And for me personally, um, I graduated, I always, um. Well, I don't joke. I… I… haha, I laugh.

With Sarah, who would always say, like, I'm a dinosaur, because I graduated grad school in 1997, and back then, I was not required to take a fluency course, I wasn't required to do a school internship. It was just different. You know, expectations, um, and I thought, 100%, I don't care about any of that stuff, I'm working in a hospital, lo and behold, my first job was with. Birth to 3, and then I went into preschool, and then I was in schools and never looked back. But I didn't have the foundation, and I do remember that first.

Kind of… I was doing some contract work, but then I remember hitting. A school setting, and all of those are kids. And I was like, I don't know, like, I would try to get them to do it, and it would just be, like, a million, uh. Ugh, uh, and they hated it. I hated it, and so, um.

On the flip side of that, too, I had people that were saying, like, well, you're the expert, you know how to fix this, you know how to fix this, and I felt like. Not an expert at all. So, I kind of wanted to just start there about, like, I guess when SLPs, you know. You could have the best plans of where you think you're gonna end up, but you're going to land in settings. Um, even if you're like, I'll work with adults, and I think I'm gonna work here, you might end up in a setting where you don't know all the things.

So, let's maybe start there and chat a little bit about that. I always tell graduate students, when you start graduate school, a lot of us come into graduate school with this idea already. I'm either going to for sure work for kids… with kids. Or for sure work with adults, and you definitely don't want to do the other. And I always tell graduate students that.

Graduate school is the place to experiment, because anything outside of graduate school, you are assigning your license and your name, and. A contract for jobs, right? So graduate school is the place to explore, but with that, sometimes you get landed in these positions or these externships of. A setting or a population that you may not necessarily love, or may not feel confident in. I feel like that's always sort of the… two roads I went down in graduate school.

I either didn't love it. Or, I didn't feel confident in it, or those were just mixed feelings together. Um, so when I was in graduate school, when. Um, I had only gotten into one program, it just so happened to be a more medically-based program. Um, at the time, I had been coming out of undergrad.

Very excited that I got into graduate school because I had a pretty low GPA, but my mom had previously gotten sick. She had a kidney stone that went septic, she was intubated. The whole nine, how to relearn how to walk and talk and all of that. But coming out of that medical experience as an undergrad and future SLP. I had my mind set.

On being a medical speech pathologist, even more so now that I got into this medically-based. Speak pathology program. It's more medically based because I had a gross anatomy lab for anatomy, so we got. Assigned a cadaver for the semester and had to dissect from the top of the head all the way down to the. And that's when I would drop out.

Oh my gosh! And our exams, literally, you would pin. A nerve in the patient, and… we would have to identify it. So, pretty crazy. So I was… Sweat.

Through and through a medical… or short medical SLP. Then, my first externship came in graduate school, and it was a high school. And that's where I immediately started thinking, I don't like this, I'm not confident in this. I look like a high schooler, they are going to rip me apart when I go in there. Long story short, it ended up being my absolute favorite population, and most of what I've worked in outside of graduate school.

But, I didn't have that confidence coming out of graduate school to say, I do like this and I don't like this, because I just didn't have enough experience. To say that, but I knew I did sort of like that high school population. I knew that sometimes medical CFs are a little hard to find, not impossible, but a lot harder than. Your typical, like, school-based position. So I decided to do my, um… clinical fellowship in a high school, which I ended up loving.

But COVID hit right in the middle of it, and it extended my clinical fellowship for about 4 months. And for anyone who's in a clinical fellowship or been in a clinical fellowship, you know the second someone says it's being extended. It already feels long enough as it is, yeah? You want to cry. Exactly.

I was like, I just need to get to these 1,260 hours. I was, like, playing that number in Lotto, just, like, trying to get lucky. Um, it ended up being extended. I didn't have the best relationship with my supervisor, so as soon as that experience ended. I was done.

I had my grass is greener on the other side glasses on. I left that high school position. It was only my clinical fellowship. And my first licensed position, I jumped right into home healthcare. And if you've ever been in home healthcare, you know that you were left alone more often than.

Than being with people. With my CF experience, home health, and it was sink or swim, and very difficult, and I know, um, even when… in terms of supervision, everything, but yeah. Been there. That is tough. Yeah.

It's a lot of feeling like you… aren't the expert, feeling not confident, but being looked at as the expert, and being asked questions that you don't necessarily know the answer to. And you don't have that supervisor… as readily available as you would in something like a school position. Um, so feeling that low confidence, but now having my license was a very conflicting feeling in my brain. Because I, like you said earlier, like, I am known as being the professional, I am fully licensed. But my brain and my confidence doesn't feel like that.

So I did this home healthcare position. Now, mind you, it was still COVID time, so I was, like, going into patients' houses with, like, a full mask and a full suit, and I was doing it in downtown Brooklyn, where the parking is not so great, but I didn't want to take the train. Because then I could have gotten COVID, the whole nine. So… Long story short, I only lasted 30 days in that job, and that was really hard for me, because I spent so much time in graduate school learning, I did pretty well in my clinical fellowship. And now I am in my first licensed position as a medical speech pathologist, something that I've.

Dreamed of being. And I cried every single day coming home, because I knew it wasn't for me. I knew that… That position just wasn't for me in that moment. Whether or not it could be right for me now, it just wasn't right for me then, and it was so hard to come to that decision. Although my brain already knew it.

It was hard for my brain and my heart to agree to say, hey. This isn't working, it is okay to move on. And I think all of those feelings as a new clinician are so strong. Well, and that's a big, I think. It's kind of two paths, right?

Like, it could be that the setting just isn't right for you, and that is hard, I think, as SLPs and all the training that we go through, and we think that we can do anything, and like you said, it aligned with how you saw yourself in your career, and it just didn't work. That's okay, and that can happen. On the flip side, though, I think, too, is you're going to end up in situations that are uncomfortable. Unexpected, whether it's your first year or your 21st year, I mean, we work in a profession where research is always evolving. Um, you're always going to have people, uh, whether it be.

Colleagues and coworkers, or processes and systems, or the people that you're supporting through therapy that will show you exactly what you don't know. So, sometimes it's that other path, too, of, like, I just… it's not what I expected. But there are maybe some things I can do to build my confidence and skills to make my expectations align more with what I'm doing. So, have you found yourself… do you feel like that situation was more just like. That's not what I expected, and I… there is, like, this is clearly… I don't think anything is healthy if you're.

Crying every day after work, like, that's probably a first sign that this is not the greatest… to me, that feels more than just confidence. You know, that is… That is not like a day, that is an everyday. But, um, was that your first, um, brush at that, or had you had, like, other situations where you're like, okay, not what I expected, but I could see. Growing… Um, in that area to make it more aligned. Yeah, that… that… that was the first time I had experienced that, and I think that it comes from… the need to be perfect.

I feel like on that journey to becoming a graduate or a speech pathologist, we are almost. Ingrained or taught that perfection is the only level of standard in the speech pathology world to be successful. You know, you go in, you do graduate school applications, your advisors tell you anything less than a 4.0 is not going to get you into graduate school. You get into graduate school and you expect. A's on every class, and you expect a really good score on the praxis.

Like, we're always. Sort of taught that this level of perfection is the only thing that's going to make you successful. So when I was hit with this position. Where I didn't feel confident in it, and it just also didn't feel like it was working out for me to be traveling all of that. I blamed myself, and I couldn't get out of that thought process of, I'm a failure because this didn't work out.

I'm a failure because I'm not good at this. And… that sort of rock bottom made me realize that, like. I love it. I have to be my number one fan, and confidence is only going to be… only gonna come within. Like, no one is going to give me that green light, like, hey, you're confident, hey, you're perfect, because.

Like you said before, there's always research coming out in speech pathology. None of us can say that we are perfect. Because it then puts us at a disadvantage and our clients. Because, let's say I say I'm perfect today, tomorrow there's new research, and then I'm not learning about it because I've reached this level of perfection, so… Having that sort of happened to me, and… Needing to… verbally say I want to quit this job. And letting myself go through that process.

Really taught me how to believe in myself. It sort of left me with the position, like, you know this is the right decision, you've FaceTimed every single person in your family to. Have them agree that this is the right decision, but you know it's the right decision, so believe and trust in yourself, because there will always be a next opportunity. And as a new clinician, it was so hard to make that. Like, mentality shift, until I was, like, at rock bottom in a position where I sort of had to make that shift.

Well, and it's interesting, as somebody who, into my career then supervised students and, um. Cfs, and I loved it. I always loved the energy. Uh, and then I became… I was the lead in the largest district in Arizona, so I've worked with people with all levels of experience, and I will say, the number one thing that I did not love to work with. Was the new clinician, or the… even the experienced clinician, but the new clinician.

That thought they knew everything. Because that mindset right there is… and this is exactly what you're saying, though, is that we do this to ourselves, that we think we're supposed to know everything, we think we're supposed to get this magic wand when we graduate, and even if. We know we didn't. We're like, well, we gotta pretend we have it in the closet somewhere because everybody else thinks we have it. Like, I think that idea of.

Later on, what I learned to be more of, like, growth mindset, you will learn from failures. I mean, that is how our brain, even when I used to talk to kids that I worked with, students that I worked with, I would give them that analogy, uh, like, if they started to get frustrated, I'm like, do you think basketball players go out there and just nail three-pointers every time? No, they throw, and then they miss, and then they adjust, and that is, like, the foundation for all of our learning, and I… I do think, like, in this field in particular, it is tough when everyone else is labeling us an expert, and so then we start to get into that trope, too, of like, oh, well then, I guess we have to be. An expert, how the heck do I do that? And I think so many new graduate students or new clinicians are always.

Told by… the more seasoned clinicians, that confidence will come with time. Confidence will come with time, which is so extremely true. But it's so hard to internalize when you're in that new moment where you don't have the time under your belt. Right. Um.

And, like, like you said, the sports players, like, sports players who get paid thousands and thousands of dollars. A minute. Yeah. Still practice, then they still have practice sessions. They still have batting practice, they still have.

Football practice sessions, right? Practice eventually makes them become more confident. The same thing happens with speech pathology. But you have to allow yourself to make those mistakes. Mistakes are the biggest things you learn from.

Sometimes they're embarrassing, and sometimes. They don't feel great. I can talk about so many mistakes I've made in graduate school that I can laugh about now, but those are some of the biggest lessons that I've taught, and it took me just, like. Sitting down with my own brain to say, like. It's okay to make mistakes.

I know sometimes in graduate school, it feels like we're constantly trying to prove ourselves. Or prove that we belong, or at the table, or we deserved that acceptance letter. But every single successful speech pathologist that you've spoken to, or talked to, or even see on Instagram with their beautifully curated feed. Has made mistakes, has failed tests, has quit jobs. Um, most people just don't talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, if you think about Instagram or TikTok or any of those, those are highlight reels, and we know that, you know, from… we talk about that in a lot of different areas, but sometimes tend to forget that when we're looking through this professional lens at professional accounts, but I mean, I think it would be weird if you didn't think you made a mistake, or if you didn't think other people make mistakes, because. We're all human, and thankfully, I think the biggest difference that I see now is this… the community that we have access to, that back in my day, there was no such thing. There was one website I remember. Early on in my career that had… it was that one, and I can't even… Remember, she's the one that… it's still out there, and it had a bunch of, like, materials linked, and you could get, like, board maker pics of. Articulation sheets, but it was way before TPT, and then even now, I think, you know.

Outside of… of the resources, like therapy resources, that you can chat with somebody, that you can… you can attend conferences, listen to podcasts. I mean, none of this was available back… back when I was, um… practicing, like, early in my career, if I went to a conference, I better have, like, $600, and, um, be able to physically attend, and uh… The resources looked dated, there was nobody to really talk to unless you found that one. Co-worker or had a great mentor experience, which I was fortunate, even in my, um, CF. My CF mentor was terrible, was completely absent, but there was somebody in… that, um… in my company that basically became that role, and worked with my, you know, technical CF supervisor to. Manage me as a CF, but I was like, this is crazy that I… I need the support, and I can't even find it.

You know, from my… from somebody who it's their assignment to… to provide that to me. But, um… How do you feel like, then, if you are new to a situation, and again, I do think that this is beyond. Students or CFs, I think it's, you know, if I walk into a position now, what is the number one kind of grounding. Tips that you would suggest as you're entering. Into something that… You know, it's new.

Um, I think one of the simplest things that's always in the back of my brain from an old supervisor is to introduce yourself to everyone. Like. The second you join a new position. The janitor, the secretary, the nurses, whatever position you are, introduce yourself to everyone, because you will need those people. A lot of the times.

New clinicians suffer in silence because they are. Terrified that if they ask for help, they're going to be seen as. Not a professional, or… weaker or less than. Um, so a lot of the times, newer clinicians are suffering in silence, and I think the biggest thing is to. Open up that communication with everyone.

You can learn something from everyone in this position, and whether or not your supervisor is good or bad or helpful or not. The benefit of having so many people on social media, or just so much of a bigger speech pathology community. That's readily available nowadays. Use that. Um… Don't suffer in silence.

It's so hard to ask for help. But in a profession that is literally built on advocacy for our clients. I want to remind people that you deserve the same sort of advocacy and support. So often do we give our all. To our clients.

We start a new position, and our mind immediately starts thinking of clients. What can I do for my clients? What can I do to make my room better for my clients? And my caselo better for my clients? But what are you doing to help you get used to that new job?

Are you reaching out to asking for support? Are you letting people know that your caseload is extremely high and you cannot handle it anymore? Or are you just suffering in silence? I think that is a big, sort of. Uh, I would say, like, a bubble or, like, elephant that's hard between these relationships.

You know, starting a new position, you want to be looked at as the expert, so sometimes asking questions maybe makes you not look like that. But you're putting yourself at a disadvantage, just like support and advocacy and accommodations and all of that. Help our clients, you deserve the same thing. So… I guess it's speeding up would be a good sort of speaking up and introducing yourself to everyone. Yeah, I feel like you touched on a lot of things there that really, it's A relationships.

That's the key to everything we do, is… I think, especially, you know, most of my career, I've been in the schools, and that is a… amazing place to be, because you have a core team of professionals. Those… even, you know, from general education to special education to, as you said, the janitors, the secretaries, these are people that are core to, you know, sometimes maybe even if you're not relying on them professionally. I had my favorite people were the second grade teachers that I ate lunch with every day and became travel buddies, you know? Like, and we're still friends today. So you need your relationships, because that grounds you.

That second idea of, um, not afraid to ask for help, I think even getting in… I know personally. I remember being called an expert once, and it was a few years into my career, but not a lot. Like, I'd probably been, I don't know, 5… 6, 7 years out, and somebody kept calling me the expert, this kindergarten teacher, and I finally said. You are the expert, too! You are as much of an expert in speech and language and reading and all of that right now as I am.

You just look at it through the lens of your typical students. I am maybe, uh, have more information on disordered speech and language, but stop acting like. I'm the only one that could do something, and then I remember, um, teaching her things on, like, phonological processes, and she became, like, that whole idea of RTI and working with teachers, she was, like, my model. I hardly. Ever got a referral from her, because once I showed her things, I'm like, these are things you're doing anyways.

Try this as well with your kids that can't do this. And so I think it's the relationships, it's the speaking up, it's the don't let yourself fall into that expert role. You have a lens on things, just like the teachers do, just like the parents do, just like the students do. It's everybody… it's putting all of these amazing brains together to come up with what's best for any. Given situation or student, or whatever.

And then I noticed the third one. Oh, the advocacy. I think that is a huge thing, too, that… Yeah. This… if you ever feel like you're suffering, you know, I think of talking to my students, and there will be nights you take work home, there will be nights where you, um… think, am I doing the right thing? But if that is a… A regular thought, you really do need to pause for a minute and think about.

Why you might be feeling like that, and if… is it something like caseload size? Have you tried to do some things? And then when you go. Advocate. I think the biggest thing, too, is not just to say, my caseload's too high, it's, you know what?

I have this many students, I have tried these things, here's my schedule, can you look at it? Is there something I'm missing? Or… something in these numbers have to give, because I… Can't do this. Um… So advocacy, I think, is the way you advocate, too, sometimes, so you can be heard, but it all kind of connects in with. Again, your relationships, your communication skills, your, you know… I… I… and I truly think that transition from graduates.

Student to CF to, like, licensed speech pathologists. There are so many things going on that a lot of it is within. A lot of it is. Realizing or resetting the standards that you're setting for yourself. For so long, your standards were, I have to have a 4.0, I have to get 100 on the test, and now you come out of graduate school and you don't have grades.

What are the standards you are setting for yourself? Because sometimes, I mean, I even did it myself, you know? At positions that just have handed me caseloads of 85 students. Okay, that's the standard that they set, I have to do that. I can't say no, I can't complain, I can't say this is too much for me.

That's the standard that they met. So it's this kind of, like, in-between of realizing that, like, you are no longer a student, you are the expert, and you can speak up. But you can also allow yourself to be that new clinician and ask questions, and… experiment with your clients and the treatment and all of that. I think it's so hard to relinquish that student. Responsibility, or just the student… Season of your life, and transition into that.

Licensed clinician being. They're big girl pants. And also allowing yourself to grow into that, because who I am now as a clinician is definitely who I was not. Five years ago, and who I won't be in 10 years, right? It'll… every… there's always seasons of changing.

Um, but a lot of it is resetting those standards. And I even had to do that with myself, like. I am people pleaser, uh, through and through, straight to my heart, but I had to realize that some of these standards that I was setting for myself is just impossible. Like. Checking off everything on my to-do list.

No one does that. No one gets that done. Every day, and it's just… Getting out of the grad school bubble of thinking that everything needs to be done right now, with perfection, and realizing that once you get out into the real world, like, you could take… Yeah. Life is not perfect. In any sense.

Professional, personal, whatever. Was there anything specific that you can think of that. Really was that aha for you, where you went from, I need to know it all. To, I'm gonna learn as I go, and understand there will be gaps, and I can fill in those gaps, whatever they may be. Organization.

Clinical knowledge, whatever. Was there any point… was it that point where you left that… that job in home health, or was there something else where you're like. I'm just gonna pause, and I've gotta reframe how I'm… seeing this. Um, it sort of happened in my clinical fellowship. I had a supervisor who, as a person, wonderful person.

As a supervisor, didn't necessarily supervise me or mentor me. Um, and she had been the only other speech pathologist in that school, so she was, like, the only other SLP I can sort of go to for help. And most of our meetings were… Her telling me about her weekend, and all of that, not really giving me the support that I had wished I had gotten. Um, so in that moment, I kind of had to just sit down with myself to say, hey. She's not helping you.

There's no one else that's helping you. So you have to kind of figure out how to do it on your own, and at the end of the day, if you make mistakes, so be it. Like, I just had to be okay with mistakes at that point, because there was no one else for me to turn to for support. Um… Another… Is that what you would have told yourself day one? Like, if you could go back in a time machine and give yourself a little video of, hey, Sam, here's your pep talk as you go into your CF, is that what you would.

Lead with? I would say slow down, relax, take a deep breath. It is all going to be okay, and you… there is absolutely no need to be perfect. I was so, so incredibly stuck. On being a perfect clinician.

That when I wasn't. I was just setting myself up for disappointment, so I would for sure say… It's all gonna be okay, and… allow yourself to be a beginner. Because I think sometimes when we graduate and we receive that diploma, it's now a whole new mentality of. You are not a student anymore, you need to do everything and know everything, but… As a first-year clinician, I made so many mistakes. I don't even know if the goals that I was doing for my clients were good.

If I look back at them now, I'd probably laugh. But every single speech pathologist has gone through that phase. Whether it was last year or 15 years ago, everyone has gone through that, and if you don't allow yourself to go through that phase of asking questions and being a beginner. You're just gonna consistently set yourself up for disappointment, because those mistakes are gonna happen. There's so much that goes into a good speech pathology session.

Right? How much sleep the client got the night before, how much sleep I got, if someone's late, or… There's just so much that goes in that whether or not you're a seasoned speech pathologist, there's gonna be things that go wrong. And the beauty of speech pathology, and allowing myself to. Unshackle myself from the… Shackles of Perfection is realizing that. Being a good speech pathologist is knowing how to change things on the fly, is knowing how to problem-solve, is knowing how to be flexible.

Um, because that is what supports our clients. No single client cares about our perfection. If you sat in front of a client. Pretending to be perfect, it's super intimidating to someone who is struggling. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, so… so realizing that, I think… being on the patient's family side when my mom went through that whole, um… Sickness made me realize what a patient actually wants, what someone who is struggling and being thrown into this. Unknown, yeah. Scary medical unknown just wants comfort and wants to be looked at as a human. Um, and spoke to like a human, and that is the biggest part of therapy.

I love that. I don't think we could end on anything better. Um, I know we can't cover all of the things in our short little chat today, but where is the best place for people to find you? What platforms and handles and all that good stuff? Um, so my Instagram and my website are, speaking of semantics, but it's spelled S-A-M, like Sam Antics.

That's, like, my apparel and stuff, but then I also run, and I've created a… Game-based test preparation program for graduate students studying for the praxis. So we do a weekly Kahoot game, just, like, fun SLP trivia to help them remember the information, and that is. Slptestprep.com and SLPtest Prep on Instagram. Amazing. Well, thank you again for sharing your story and, um, I love the connection of this, that we are lifelong learners.

It feels like when you're in the thick of it, like when you're. Knew that you should know all the answers, but there is nobody that knows all the answers, even if you think they do. So, thanks for reminding us of that, and, um, can't wait until we get to chat again. Thank you so much. If I could leave off with one thing is to document your journey, take pictures.

Have fun, take pictures of the things that are hard and difficult and things you don't want to do, because in a few years, you're gonna look back and be like, wow, I did that. And that's in the moment where I am, and it's gonna make you feel really proud. 

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