Recently at the University of Essex I have been trying to start a SLT Society to bring together both the year 1 and year 2 students, as well as to promote SLT to the undergraduates on campus that may have an interest in language, the sciences and communication. We wanted to be able to get a budget and invite members so that we could fund external speakers, training days and SIGs as well as develop journal clubs and a safe area to discuss issues between peers. Having pushed and pushed for this since December 2012, we were finally offered the opportunity to be ratified today!
I had to prepare a 2 minute speech and was informed prior to today that I would give this 2 minute speech about why we wanted to be a society, then there would be an anonymous vote. I had assumed this would be a select few members of the Student's Union and was then surprised when I walked into a big lecture theatre to find committee members from all societies on campus! I had managed to drag another committee member with me from the SLT Society and so when 'societies to be ratified' were called to the front of the lecture theatre I dragged her with me (luckily she was willing!).
Another hopeful society went before us, and she spoke for 2 minutes, was then bombarded with questions and was then told the voting would commence. Suddenly arms were flying in the air to the words "not in favour of this society" and hardly any movement during "in favour". She unfortunately didn't get ratified. Well, it was fair to say I was nervous following this as I had not been mentally prepared for questions, nor had I been prepared for a non-anonymous vote - now I was faced with watching people say that they were for or against us.
In the essence of being a therapist though I remained swan-like and despite my desperate nervous paddle, I looked graceful on the surface and took to the stage with my accomplice. I spoke of how it was imperative that the 2 year groups merged more over the course of the 2 years on the MSc programme and how we longed to draw in members from linguistics, sciences and psychology degree programmes to share knowledge and work together. I spoke of recent news that SLT is "least preferred" profession for teenagers, highlighting the lack of awareness of SLT and how we really wanted to bring this to light, who we are and what we do. In my flustered state my accomplice took over and really reiterated that we wanted to promote awareness and inclusion, before I then went on to outline that we hoped to have social events as well as academic events in the form of external speakers and journal clubs.
Then it was doomsday time. The floor was opened to questions. Not a single person had a single question. We paused a second to enjoy the moment of relishing in the fact we had made our points clear and concise to the audience. Only to then return to doomsday feelings of vote time. I could have jumped for joy and screamed when "those in favour" was said and the whole room shot their hands in the sky! Of course, there was the cynical man in the front row who put his hand to "not in favour", but besides him, we were on the full stretch home. The VP of activities then said the sweet word "congratulations"! We were officially a society!!!
Hard work, persistence and dedication to the cause paid off, all whilst looking calm and collected - all features of the SLT profession from my experiences so far!
It was an even lovelier moment when a girl from the crowd came up to us at the end of the meeting to tell us she desperately wanted to be a SLT and that she was so glad we had decided to start up, asking for our email addresses and more info. We had our first member!!
It's safe to say that from now till I leave in August, there will be much awareness raising, many academic events and a much better sense of community between year 1 and year 2 students.
I am so looking forward to this journey!
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