Today was my first day of research! I will be studying the fascinating field of disfluency... In all honesty I was a bit apprehensive about this internship for I was no expert in phonetics, speech physiology or anything remotely close to disfluency. Above all, my doubts stemmed from the unbearable question - "will I need this for medical school?" While Dr.Lickley discussed vital information about our project, I wasted time trying to mentally justify how this research would help me in the medical field. However, this is a dangerous mindset and it prevents me from truly engaging. When life becomes a scale in which I must justify each experience relative to my medical school application, I overlook the complexities that make up each moment. I soon realized that when I abandon this mindset I am truly fascinated by the way our body strings together our conversations. In fact, our brains are so intelligent that there exists instantaneous error repair, your brain automatically corrects a speech error because it has already prepared for it! Not only is this mind blowing but it also depicts the incredible convergence between linguistics and human physiology. Not only is this new mindset liberating but it has also brought everything in full circle. I no longer have to ask myself that silly question.
