Changes Part One

A few weeks ago I mentioned that there were some changes going on a work and things were a little stressful. Well they got a little more stressful and now that things have settled I thought I would share/document them for myself.

Before I start talking about where I am now with my job, I want to start by sharing how I got to this point. Since I am going to start at the beginning, I think I will break this up into 2-3 posts, so here is Part One:

In 2005 I was a junior in college at the University of Texas at Dallas. I was majoring in Speech Pathology and Audiology. I knew that I wanted to work with children, but other than that I didn’t have firm plans for my future career. Over spring break I met Jon and you can read about it here.

Fast forward to my senior year. Jon and I were still dating long distance, and getting pretty tired of the drive up and down i35. One afternoon I got an email from a professor that was only supposed to be sent to graduate students. It was a job opportunity as a school shadow for a little guy on the autism spectrum as his preschool. I was very interested in getting some new experiences so I responded, not really thinking anything would come from it since the mother was looking for a graduate student.

Well, the mom decided to take a chance with me and during my last year at UTD, I worked a a school shadow for her 3 year old son. Honestly looking back, I was okay at the job but I had no training so I am sure I could have done better. 

When I graduated in May of 2006, I was pretty tired of school and not interested in starting graduate school right away. I also knew I wanted to move to Austin. So I started looking for jobs and after lots of searching I came across a company that provided home applied behavior analysis therapy and school shadowing for children on the autism spectrum. I applied and got the job. A few weeks later I was sitting in Austin going through training to become a behavioral therapist.

For the next two years I worked for this company and got lots of good training and experience. During this time, I had made the decision that this was the population of children that I wanted to work with. I decided I was ready to go back to grad school and get my masters in special education with an emphasis in autism/ABA. Oh and Jon and I got married. :) However I had some issues with how the company treated its employees and once a favorite supervisor left, I knew it was time to find another job.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to look far. The very same supervisor that had hired me 2 years prior and then moved away, came back to Austin and opened her own company. Everything very much just fell perfectly into place and I began working with her as a lead therapist.

Although I have always known, as I look back at how everything fell into place, from receiving an email only meant for grad students to finding a job in Austin and then having the option to continue to do what I loved for a smaller company, it is obvious that God’s hand was orchestrating it all. As I think back about the times where there was drama (like when I left the large company – lots.of.drama!) it is comforting to see that everything worked out. It gives me confidence that yet again, everything will fall into place.

Stay tuned for Changes Part Two.

-Lauren-