What if I told you that you had to watch people kick a ball back and forth for an hour and a half? Would you agree to it? Would you enjoy it? It sounds rather boring but millions of people worldwide enjoy watching soccer. The difference is that the kicking of a ball has purpose in game of soccer compared to watching people kicks balls back and fourth. The purpose is a goal that the players are trying to achieve for there team. Similarly, in life goals severe as a purpose outside of the victory that is felt upon achieving them.
Goals are different for different people in various aspects in their lives. One of my biggest goals in life is improving the clarity in the articulation of my speech. Speech has never been something that I could have taken for granted as a result of me being diagnosed as a toddler with Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy is the result of having a lack of oxygen before, shortly after, or during birth. Because I was born prematurely, the likely hood of me getting this chronic illness increased. As an infant using my mouth mussels to eat was a challenge and to this day my speech is unclear and I always bite on my drinking straws. I cannot say all the sounds fluidly in the English language but understand everything that is said to me. This is really frustrating for me and to make matters worse I am my hardest critic. To me everyone’s speech sounds clearer than my even those with disabilities. Due to the reasons above my speech clarity is a goal that I have.
Goals are the gas in a person’s engine, in that they provide the drive for people to work hard. When I was little ,I thought that if I worked really hard that when I was an adult I would speak normally. I did not mind speech therapy back than. I went and worked hard and did things that the speech teachers asked me to do. I tried so many techniques from lying on my back trying hard to say sounds to having stuff in my mouth to work to strengthen my mouth mussels. I did not mind working hard because my thinking was I had to do this in order to speak like grown ups do. Looking back on it, I would say that it was hard work but I complied with the grueling work and stuck to it in hopes of achieving my goal. My fuel was my goal and with it I forged ahead with speech therapy.
Just like in cars, without goals there is no inner fuel; thus there is a lack of motivation to work hard . In seventh grade my speech teacher told me that I would always have unclear speech do to Cerebral Palsy. The speech teacher and I got along well and I trusted her so I took the information at face value. The remainder years I had at speech therapy though the school system were a waste of time for me and the speech pathologist. I no longer had a goal so the work became extremely frustrating. During my junior year of high school ,I stopped going to speech therapy for a while. I had a class that period that I went to anyway so I went there instead of therapy. I was taking Advance Placement United States history from a guy who had a hard time understanding ,me and I once I told him that I had left speech he got vary concerned for me and encouraged me to return to speech. So I was back to sitting across from my speech pathologist understanding to put my tongue in the roof of my mouth and being unsuccessful. I hated speech therapy after seventh grade because the light that was supposed to be at the end of the tunnel, me speaking clearly was no longer in site so the work became grueling and painful for me to sit though. On the rare occasions that I did work hard the vain mussels in my neck popped out , yet it seemed pointless because my speech would always be gibberish. It became a chore to go to speech therapy because I no longer had a goal.
Goals are necessary for people to make hard work meaningful. By the end of the fall 2010 semester I want to achieve the goal of getting into speech therapy and working diligently at improving the articulation of my speech. I want to do this by enrolling at Peninsula Associates , a speech center walking distance from my house. A big barrier to achieving this goal will be being able to afford the assessment and speech lessons. It may also be hard to focus if I have a lot of homework or other stuff in my mind. I can get around the finical barriers by getting SSI or getting my insurance pay for the therapy. As far as the attention barrier I can try to get focus as I am in the waiting room, and plan ahead by keeping up to date with my school assignments. Now that I know speaking clearly can be a goal to me, recent research shows the brain in more plastic than my seventh grade teacher thought, I think I can improve the diction in my speech so that I could work in any profession I chose ,as well as being a advocate for people with disabilities.
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