This past year has been an eye opening experience for me when it comes to people with disabilities. Within the year I chose the major communication sciences and disorders because it is a job that works with people that have speech impairments for the most part, but also you come across a broad spectrum of many other disabilities that can can cause the speech impairments, and I felt that it would be a compassionate job that would benefit the quality of life of others. Choosing this major has placed me in several classes that have been specifically about disabilities, how to diagnose them, how to treat them, how to create opportunities to broaden their horizons, and how to not treat them as though having a disability makes them any less of a person. One of my classes was a special education class and it required volunteer hours, I chose to work my hours at the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Stanton, VA. It worked out rather perfectly because my roommate had just won the Miss. Greater Franklin County Pageant and her platform for Miss. Virginia was working with people with disabilities and she was also doing volunteer hours at Woodrow Wilson. It was a really special experience for both of us; because they had classes during the day to attend, we were asked to come in the late afternoon and to simply interact with the patients, that were mostly around are age. We had the chance to sit down and play board games, pool, watch movies, do arts and crafts, and go bowling. I had never interacted with people with disabilities on such a personal level, because in my field it is all about educating them and there are goals trying to be attained, so it was refreshing to become friends with so many of them and just to be in a laid back setting where they were all being themselves, not worried about the outside pressures of the world around them. I'll never forget the time I spent there and the impact they made on my outlook on life... enjoy what you have been given because you never know what someone else is going through, and try to be a friend to everyone.