This Is the Voice (....)

She was pacing back in the wings off stage, before her presentation to the university lecture series was to begin. She was not on the university faculty; she had, though, completed her graduate classwork here and knew that her mentors would be scattered throughout the audience. She had begun to build her research specialty in voice disorders here; after there had been clinical discoveries too numerous to mention in the university speech clinic: hearing the initial sounds, words and sentences come out of a truck driver after a TEP prosthesis had been placed in his trach stoma; the delight of electronic squiggles when a cheerleader who needs to learn more resilient vocal habits, sings her "ah" as long as she can into the microphone; a middle-aged mother post CABG, works to erase the effects of her extubation granuloma; or even, the Parkinson patient reading aloud a bank of sentences loaded with junctures and with high front vowels.

Yes, she had been paying her dues over the years, in many clinical settings, to learn more and do more good for voices of all kinds. She knew though, that this lecture today might put her career as a voice scientist on the map - and open so many doors of opportunity. A new cohort of research subjects, perhaps. Maybe a collaboration with one of her former mentors. Guest lecturing in some classes at her alma mater?! So many opportunities may come about, because of this one appearance.

Now, it was almost time for her introduction, so - she chatted to herself in sotto voce, to hit the bullet points of her presentation, and hoped with articulated words that the projector for her PowerPoints will work correctly! Sooooooooooooooo embarrassed when she had given this talk in Iowa City, and when the projector was turned on - it smelled like one of those loose meat sandwiches popular in the upper Midwest. Let's hope, she said, that they pay close attention to the conclusions slide. That's my big finish.

So many thoughts flashing through her head now, like she is rifling through all the slides mentally, in rapid succession. Out in the audience, she sees through from the wings  to her former professors. There are her four favorites, sitting together in the center! She was forever grateful that her studies, and the patient prodding of her mentors, took her in the direction of voice science. It isn't the most lucrative of the specialties in speech-language pathology, nor is it the "sexiest", - but it is and it will be hers. Suddenly, she heard him....

Her head cocked as she heard - Carson Daly??

"This is The Voice Expert Extraordinare...." and she trod onstage to very appreciative applause.