Jessica “Annabelle” Horton

UH 120

June 6, 2020

Who Am I? Reflection

Who Am I?

As I enter my second year at the University of Alabama, I have come to realize

how important it is to truly know who you are to be able to effectively set and achieve

goals. I started as a student at the University of Alabama with some college credit, so I

will finish my bachelor’s degree in 5 semesters instead of 8 semesters. Because of this,

I will be graduating earlier than expected, and have a shorter amount of time to decide

what the next few years of my life will include. To set the most effective goals for

myself, I will need to understand who I am, who I aspire to be, and how I will get from

who I am currently to who I plan to be.

To begin to set future goals, I will first define who I am with respect to my

identities and background. There are many ways to define who I am demographically. I

am Sean and Jessica’s daughter, Chip’s big sister, a granddaughter, and a friend. I

have been fortunate to grow up in Savannah, Georgia, which is a beautiful city on the

coast with a strong sense of history combined with a desire to progress. Growing up, I

went to an elementary and middle school that was a visual and performing arts magnet

school, where I learned to appreciate the importance of the arts and creativity. I

continued my education at an all-girls high school whose motto is “Women Who Lead”.

My high school gave me the opportunity to find my voice as a strong female and

cultivate leadership skills that I have been able to rely on throughout my life. All these
are facts about who I am, but I think it is critical to determine what the most important

things are to me. The most important thing to me is people. Of course, my family and

friends are important to me, but people in general are. I enjoy meeting new people,

hearing their stories, learning who they are, and most importantly, helping them.

The goal to help others comes from experiences that I have had in the past. I

was born with a birthmark on my left cheek. My whole life, I have had people ask me

about it, sometimes they are simply curious, sometimes they are just rude. Either way, I

know what it is like to be judged for something you have no control over. When I was a

freshman in high school, I started considering what I wanted to do as a career. I noticed

that people who have speech difficulties like stuttering experienced something like what

I experienced with my birthmark: Being questioned and judged for something they had

no control over. So, to describe who I want to be in the simplest terms, I want to be a

Speech Language Pathologist. Further, I want to be an SLP who helps her patients

overcome their speech challenges and gain confidence. Ultimately, it is my hope that

when my patients reflect on their time in speech therapy, they will know that I supported

them, and helped them achieve their goals.

To get from the Communicative Disorders student I am today to the Speech

Language Pathologist I plan to be in the future, I will use what I learn in my Personal

and Professional Development class. One aspect of the course that I believe will be

particularly useful is learning how to develop and maintain a professional network. In

high school, I began to develop a local network of professionals who were able to give

me advice on selecting a college and securing scholarships for my education. I’m

looking forward to learning how to develop a similar network that is specifically related
to speech language pathology. Also, I believe that this course will help me significantly

in developing a professional resume that I can take with me as I begin my career. As I

have done research on resumes, I have found much conflicting advice about proper

formatting and which information to include. I am looking forward to creating a well-

developed resume and cover letter in this course. Finally, I want to learn to develop my

own personal brand during this course. I am proficient in most types of social media but

could use instruction in how to create and maintain a consistent, professional, personal

brand.

In conclusion, my main goal in life right now is to become a Speech Language

Pathologist and help people with speech challenges. In order to do that, I have

determined who I am, and who I want to be. Using all the knowledge I’ll gain in

Personal and Professional Development will help me outline a clear plan to become the

SLP I want to be.