I am at the Eastgate Starbucks in Bellevue, near the ramp to I-90, scene of my early morning commutes.  I still listen to traffic reports.  I can listen to  talk of traffic building up and take pleasure in not being in the growing throng of cars.  I realize it is unkind of me to delight in others’ traffic woes, to enjoy congestion because I don’t have to suffer in it. At this point, I take pleasure in all the little things that remind me I am in a new life.

 

What is this new life?  What is “Tower to Trenches”?

 

 

In fact, I learned that for me, the space between the tower and trenches was not so much an untraversable gulf as a rocky and sometimes unclear path.  I also found it a particularly interesting and challenging place, where I became more than solely the professor or solely the speech-language pathologist.  It was not a space to be leapt over in one huge jump but a place to be explored and appreciated.  It turned out to be a space with plenty of room--room for the academic in me and room for the true clinician.  

 

That space is part of what this website is about:  to bridge what I know (and still love) from my life in the academic tower to what I experience (and will continue to learn about) in the trenches of real life.  Certainly, the working world of the clinician (whether speech-language pathologist, audiologist, physical therapist, occupational therapist, or other professional) is in the heart of the trenches.  What have I learned about this world--both from being in it as a speech-language pathologist and observing it--and how do I see the realities of this world in comparison to what I teach?

 

Some of the questions I will be writing about include:  What does “real world” mean?  Why does speech-language pathology in a university setting seem so different as compared to what is practiced in a community setting (i.e., “real world” environment”), and what does that say about academic learning?  (For example:  what does a student learn about three baseline data points, and who in the world actually takes them?)  If the community-based clinical world felt so real when I was there, why did I return to the University, and how did I view my work there? How do I reconcile what I experienced in my clinical life and what I taught at the University?

 

In addition, the definition of “trenches” is now expanding for me. Beyond the trenches of applied clinical work, I see the trenches of something called “real life.” What is “real life” and how will it connect to my former life?  If my identity was as a college instructor, in the ivory tower club, what is my identity now?  While I would not pretend that the trenches of retirement bring the same challenges as the trenches of the working world, I confess to finding a curious parallel in bridging my historical academic self and my new real-world self.