Apparently, I am more technologically challenged than I thought, as it seems you all randomly received an email from me this morning! I was doing a bit of updating on old posts yesterday and accidentally deleted one - my very first post from 2014 actually! When I ‘un-deleted’ it, apparently that meant you all got an email about it.

So I figured, since I’ve been so terrible about updating this blog, this might then be a good time to provide everyone with a quick life update!

Living in London

London has always been, and probably always will be, one of my favorite cities in the world. It’s a blend of old and new, highrises and royal parks. I feel lucky that I get to live in between the two - I have the city about 2 miles to the South and Hampstead Heath a mile to the North.

Plus, I have a killer view from my flat window.

Transportation in London is crazy expensive, so I do try and walk to university at least one way each day. I’ll then take the bus the other time, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never not find riding on the top of a doubledecker bus lots of fun (especially when I get lucky enough to find the front seat open!).

While I still have a year and a half to two years left here, and who knows if I’ll be staying or going back to the US at the end, I’m planning on enjoying it all as much as possible.

Grad school

For those of you who aren’t aware, I’m currently living in London because I’m here getting my Masters degree at University College London!

After my two years of traveling, I had to do a bit of ‘life re-evaluating’, especially career-wise. I had a think about all the things I loved about being a marine mammal trainer, and then looked to see if I could find something else that fit; something that would utilize my behavioral modification skills as well as my science background. After quite a number of months of research, I stumbled upon the field of speech and language therapy. I didn’t make the connection at first, but the further I looked into it the more I realized the similarities between training dolphins and training people.

Fast forward to my first semester of grad school and I swear I’ve had so many moments in lectures where I’ve said to myself ‘Yup…I’ve used that with a sea lion’ or ‘Wow this is basically dolphin training 101’. I’ve had conversations with professors about forward and backward chaining, successive approximations, creating session plans, and the antecedent-behavior-consequence sequence. It’s also very heavily science-based, so I’ve been able to use my undergraduate degree a lot as well. Who would have thought that dolphin training and speech and language therapy were so connected!

Though, to be fair, I’ve also had to learn things I’m completely unfamiliar with such as developmental norms, linguistics, phonetics (in standard southern British English, so I can probably do a decent English accent these days…), and SO many different kinds of interventions. We also have a weekly placement where I get to work in a mainstream primary school with several children and deliver therapy sessions. The children are absolutely lovely, and I’m very much enjoying working with them (and their adorable accents). Though it’s also difficult to see such wonderful kids struggle so much, especially knowing that while the therapy is working for them, they’re still going to struggle in school for most of their lives.

Well that’s a quick update for now! I can’t promise I’ll be able to update much over the next few months (I have many major assignments coming due between now and the end of March), but I’ll certainly try and catch up on some of my past travels.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!