I still plan on setting up my own agency and hiring my own supervisor as soon as I put my Civic together.
I will put my Civic together once I send in both Lenovos and apply for grad school, but I don't know why NAU would accept me now when they rejected me twice before. I continue to have more experience, but they are a school. They only value grades and letters of recommendations from professors.
I didn't talk to my professors outside of class because I was too busy studying. Everything made sense, I just couldn't remember it!
I have every confidence that grad school will be completely different. I won't have dozens of classmates arriving late, leaving early, and talking amongst themselves, playing on their phones, and using Facebook on their laptop, but will that be enough for me to hear and remember virtually everything that the professor says?
I can earn more as an SLP than an SLPA, but if I have my own agency, even if there are only two of us, I doubt the difference will be significant.
Arizona pays about $135 an hour for SLPAs in rural areas like here and $150 for SLPs. I talk about paying my supervisor $150 an hour, so if I worked 10 hours at $135 and paid her $150 to supervise one hour, I bring home $120 hourly.
If I were an SLP I could earn 25% more.
My GI Bill will cover graduate school and provide me a monthly stipend, but this program requires me to maintain 20 hours a week, which I haven't since I declined to work with kids that cough, sneeze, and laugh in my face.
They are waiving the GRE right now. I scored extremely well, but they still require the hours, which are harder to get.
It feels wrong to not swing.
So, I will apply. If any on-line programs are still accepting applications I will apply there, too.
I figured that it cost $40,000 to earn a Bachelor's from a state school in Arizona. Maybe graduate school would cost $30,000, but I don't need to worry about that.
Could I handle full-time graduate school with my current caseload?
Eh...
I don't want to start my own agency so I can tell my supervisor "Clearly state your expectations or I will find someone else."
I just want more hours. In fact, I would try to continue working for my current agency. If they had a problem with it I should be able to ask if I could bring over the clients that I found on my own.
I might ask if I could bring over the supervisor that I found on my own!
My brother's speech therapist just became an SLP. She complains that her boss doesn't pay better or provide more things for free, but I think that she was paid $115 before, and I believe that she is paid around $137.50 now.
She would earn more by going rogue [and her boss is annoying], but opening an agency is a huge task, and she would receive a 17.6% raise.
While she complains about pay she bought a new truck and a house on 5 acres within the last year.
How about the opportunity cost of graduate school?
Let's say that I could maintain my current caseload and get 10 clients on my own or go to graduate school, where I would struggle to see my original clients and need to pass the ones that I found on my own to my supervisor.
Arguably, graduate school would cost $1,200 per week for 100 weeks.
Then I would be eligible to earn $50,000 for 10 months at a school!
Retirement and benefits sound useful.
If I could see the same 12 + 10 clients after graduate school I would receive a $15 raise with the existing agency and $30 at the heretofore imaginary one.
$15 * 12 = 180. $30 * 10 = hmm...
Earning an extra $480 a week--ah dang.
So, it would take 5 years to make up the opportunity cost of graduate school.