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Why did you choose to study at QMU?��

QMU is the only university in Scotland that offers a Masters in my course! It’s great that they offer this for postgraduate students, as a lot of people find out about speech and language therapy when completing other degrees like linguistics and psychology. It has saved me from having to go back to university to do another 4-year undergraduate degree, and it’s really great to be able to say you have a Masters level degree. It shows employers that you have the commitment, as well as the ability to cope well under pressure and manage your time - skills that are so needed for a Masters.����

What interested you about your chosen course?��

Ever since completing my undergraduate degree in linguistics, I have been super interested in language and communication. After university, I spent some time supporting adults with autism and learning disabilities, and I really saw how difficult communication can be for some people when others don’t take the time to learn their communication style.����

The love I had for my care work, and the passion I felt towards facilitating communication with these supported individuals, made me realise how much I would love to combine my love for language and care to work in a job like speech therapy.����

What have you most enjoyed about your course? What has been the highlight?��

The placement opportunities are 100% the highlight of the course and the thing I have enjoyed the most. It’s so great to work alongside certified speech therapists and get some hands-on experience. It gives you a lot of confidence so that you have the ability to put the theory into practice, and it’s really nice to chat to speech therapists and hear about their experiences. They can offer you helpful advice and a lot of emotional support too.��It’s a great opportunity to network too for when the time comes to look for jobs. ��

Other than placement, the highlight has to be meeting all my classmates. I’ve been so fortunate to be part of a class that really supports and uplifts one another. Everyone is always willing to help, we give each other essay advice, recommend resources to each other, and are always there to provide emotional support when things get stressful. I’ve made some friends for life through this course, and I wouldn’t have gotten through it without them.��

Have you participated in a course activity you found especially interesting?��

"A few of our lecturers have brought in past patients of theirs for Q&A sessions which has been super interesting. We’ve had talks from an individual who had a traumatic brain injury, another with a voice disorder, and two people who have had strokes which affected their speech. It was really great to hear their stories. It allowed us to see things from the patients’ point of view and to consider things that you might not automatically consider from the speech therapist’s perspective. It was a great learning opportunity, and definitely one of those moments I often reflect back on.��"

How have your lecturers supported your learning?��

The lecturers have been great. They make sure to incorporate a lot of different learning strategies into their lectures, so we do group work, case studies, they give us real life examples when they can, and they show us videos and diagrams that can help to consolidate our learning.��

They also give us little cheat sheets that we can use to study, and they always offer us advice on the best way to remember things, such as making mind-maps or remembering handy little metaphors or mnemonics. They’re also happy to chat with you if you’re struggling with something - they’ll stay after class to talk to you, or they’ll get back to promptly if you email them with a question. The course lead also has a drop in once a week where you can approach her with any questions or anything you’re struggling with, or if you want to share some good news with her! They’re all so supportive and never judgmental - they never make you feel silly, no matter what your question is!��

I was also able to obtain the Tavistock Trust for Aphasia student prize. My lecturer nominated me for the award for an essay I completed as part of my aphasia module in the MSc Speech and Language Therapy course, which she felt was worthy of the award. This was such an honour as the feedback I received for this award, and the rationale for the nomination, was so positive and gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to create therapy plans for aphasic people that are holistic, functional, and person-centred. Having this award is also a really good thing to be able to put on job applications, especially when going for adult acute or rehab jobs, as it shows I have a keen interest in aphasia - a language disorder caused by damage to the parts of the brain that are involved in language - and have the skills to produce work of a high standard.��

What have been some of your challenges with the course and university life? How have you overcome them?��

As a commuter from Glasgow, the biggest challenge for me has probably been managing my time and my coursework on top of the 2-3 hour commute I do each day between home and the QMU campus. It was definitely a hard adjustment at first, and I got really overwhelmed with how emotionally taxing the commute could actually be. One thing I found that helped me to manage my time better with a long commute was sticking around after classes to do work in the library. I found that I was more motivated to do work if I stayed on campus rather than trying to do anything at home after a long commute. It also meant that I could stay later and skip all the rush hour traffic, which helped to make the commute shorter!����

Luckily for me, QMU offers free dinners for students every Thursday at their Thank Goodness It’s Thursday event (an event which QMU puts on to support students through the cost-of-living crisis), which meant that when I stayed late on a Thursday, I could get dinner on campus too. I also found that my lecturers were so supportive and understanding when they knew I had a longer commute. The placement team definitely took it into account when they were planning my placements, which was so thoughtful of them.����

What have your placements been like?����

The placements are the best part of the course! They’re so interesting and diverse - you get to see and experience so many different areas of speech therapy that you can go into once you graduate. The university also does a really good job of making sure that the content you’re taught in class is reflective of the things you’ll see on placement, so you get a lot of opportunities to apply the theory you have learnt about assessment and observation into your placement work. For MSc Speech and Language Therapy, you carry out summer placements too. Postgraduate students do two summer blocks and undergraduate students do one. The summer blocks are 3 weeks long, so they give you a lot of time to build up your confidence so you get to know both the patients and the staff. You can also travel all over Scotland to conduct placements, so it’s a great opportunity to visit different areas and facilities in Scotland and get a feel for where you might like to work once you’ve graduated.����

Have you been a part of any extracurricular programmes during your time as a student at QMU?��

During my time at QMU, I have volunteered with a charity called Dates-n-Mates, who are a dating and friendship organisation for adults with learning disabilities. It’s an amazing charity and they do such great work; it’s been fantastic to be a part of. It helped me to see a different perspective on the lives of people with learning disabilities - previously I had interacted with people with learning disabilities as either a carer or on placement, whereas in this role I was just there to be their friend! I learnt a lot about what a lot of adults with learning disabilities actually want from their lives, and the things that are important for them. This is a really important perspective to have if you then plan to go on to work as a speech therapist with people with learning disabilities.��

What QMU student services have you used to support you through your university journey and how have they helped you?��

"We have had lectures from the careers team in our employability module, and they were super useful. I also have friends who have used the careers service to do mock interviews and have heard really good things about it. Additionally, the University pays for a Studiosity membership for all the students – an ethical writing feedback and study support website. This has been such a helpful resource as they provide a 24/7 service that allows a real person to read your essay and offer you feedback on the structure and flow, as well as your use of grammar and resources. They offer some helpful advice and have a quick turnaround too!��"

What’s your ‘top tip’ for making the most out of being a student?��

Form connections and friendships with people - your classmates will honestly be your biggest supporters. Make time to chat to them, especially about non-university related things. Make plans to hang out with them outside of class, even if it’s just to study together in the library. Go for walks together when you have breaks between classes - Musselburgh has a cute little beach you can walk down to, and there’s nice little walks all around the campus too. Say yes to plans with them! Have games nights, nights out, dinners, drinks at the Students’ Union, honestly just anything so you can get to know people and make friends. I didn’t really bother to make many friends when I was an undergraduate student in Glasgow and the difference in my undergraduate and postgraduate experiences is definitely due to the fact that I made so many friends this time around. It makes coming into class every day so much nicer when you have people you’re looking forward to seeing, and they will honestly be your biggest support system throughout your course.����

What has been the most valuable lesson that you’ve learned at university?��

That I’m capable of more than I think. Especially when you’re doing a Masters, everything can feel quite intense, and you can have a lot of assignments due. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed and just think to yourself “I can’t do this”, but I have learnt that I definitely CAN do it!����

Learning to manage my time and stress has been important for this too, but also motivating myself and thinking positively about everything has been key. I definitely think I have a lot more confidence in myself and my abilities as a result of my time on this course.��

What are you plans after graduation?��

I’m lucky that I already have a job lined up for when I finish! I’m going to work in Ayrshire for their adult inpatient team, which I’m really excited about. I actually had a placement with the same team on one of my summer placements with QMU so it’s amazing to be going back to work somewhere that I already know and enjoy. Adult acute care and rehabilitation is definitely the sector I’ve always wanted to work in. I’ve known that since we had our first neurology class in 1st year, as learning about conditions such as stroke, brain injury, and motor neuron disease was really interesting to me. I would love to become highly specialist in a specific area of speech and language therapy, but in exactly what, I’m not really sure yet - definitely something to do with adults though, maybe stroke or major trauma. I want to do something that really makes a difference to people’s lives!��