On The Science Behind Language Learning, an eye-opening interview with special guest Lisa Wilcox, taken from our archives, we explore the science of language learning through linguistics and speech pathology. Sound boring? Turns out, it is actually really funny.
And you might just discover a new angle from which to tackle your language-learning goals.
***The Bittersweet Life podcast has been on the air for an impressive 10+ years! In order to help newer listeners discover some of our earlier episodes, every Friday we are now airing an episode from our vast archives! Enjoy!***
You can listen to the episode right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
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Epsidoe 63: LANGUAGE, Part 3 (with J J Michael)
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Episode
Five key takeaways from the episode:
- Lisa Wilcox, a friend of host Katy Sewall, is studying speech language pathology in graduate school and previously lived in Norway as an au pair.
- They discuss linguistics and language acquisition, including how gender is used in different languages and how prior language knowledge affects learning new languages.
- Lisa explains her work with concussion patients, helping them manage symptoms and gradually increase cognitive load during recovery.
- Katy reveals she’s had two concussions and they discuss the importance of getting brain imaging after head injuries.
- Lisa expresses interest in potentially working overseas again in the future, possibly returning to Norway as a licensed speech pathologist.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Welcome to Rome. This is the Bittersweet Life with Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks. Hello. This is the Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall today. Tiffany is away this week dealing with all of her many things to deal with. And instead I have a friend of mine here. You want to introduce yourself?
Lisa Wilcox
Sure. My name is Lisa Wilcox. I’m Katy’s buddy from the People’s Pub days. Many, many years ago.
Katy
Should we describe what the People’s Pub was?
Lisa Wilcox
I mean, if everybody doesn’t already know, it’s kind of. I don’t mind.
Katy
It’s implied. It’s a pub for the people.
Lisa Wilcox
It’s the People’s Pub. So that’s what it is. We were co waitresses at the People’s Pub, which is a German pub in Ballard, the best neighborhood ever in Seattle. Seattle. And Katy trained me on the floor.
Katy
Did I?
Lisa Wilcox
I didn’t remember. Yep, you did. And our friend Keith trained me behind the bar.
Katy
See, I remember you being a bartender. I don’t remember you doing the floor very much.
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah, I did it all. I was a full service employee of the People’s Publisher. I could run that place.
Katy
I tell you what, probably still could. Yeah, that was back in our youth. Was that our youth back then?
Lisa Wilcox
It feels like it when I think about it now. I was in my twenties when I started.
Katy
Yeah, I was. I started there in 2000, so I was probably about 23 or 4.
Lisa Wilcox
How old are you now?
Katy
I’m 30. I’m 39. I’m 39.
Lisa Wilcox
Okay. Are you 39? I just turned 40 last week.
Katy
Really? Wow.
Lisa Wilcox
You want to talk about that?
Katy
Sure. How’s it feel?
Lisa Wilcox
Exactly the same. It feels like I’m 27, except I get worse hangovers now. That’s pretty much the difference.
Katy
Yeah. You pretty much look the same too. I feel. I don’t. Thank you.
Lisa Wilcox
We look so good.
Katy
Why are we not aging?
Lisa Wilcox
Why are we on the radio?
Katy
Yeah, I know face for radio. That’s what they say. So you’re just visiting town? Which is why I thought I’d capture this moment to have you come talk. Where are you visiting from these days?
Lisa Wilcox
I live in Boston now. Yeah, I’m in graduate school at Emerson College. I decided to take a quick whirlwind five day trip to Seattle.
Katy
For your birthday?
Lisa Wilcox
No, for my friend’s wedding. Yep. There was a wedding on Saturday, but I did parlay it. I made myself a beach bingo. Beach blanket bingo party on Thursday to celebrate. Right? Yeah.
Katy
Well, one of the reasons I thought we should talk is long Before I ever went to Rome. I think you were one of the people I knew who had actually gone and lived overseas back probably when I thought that was something I would never, ever do in a thousand years. Well, where did you go?
Lisa Wilcox
Well, when I first met you, I met you in 2004. I had just moved to Seattle from Norway. So I went to the north of Norway for a little while to be an au pair to my friends. They had twins, and I met the twins when they were like 2 months old, and then their mom at about 6 months old. We were chatting and I said, oh, boy, I’d love to come back and hang out with the kids and hang out with you and your husband. And she was like, really? Is that really true or are you just kind of, you know, doing that thing that I do, which is to say things that maybe aren’t completely making commitments that I can’t keep or something? And she said that she was really itching to get like a summer fun job and not be with the kids all the time. And so she said, come and stay for the summer. So I did. Yeah. It was the north of Norway, the most beautiful place on the planet.
Katy
How was it taking care of somebody.
Lisa Wilcox
Else’S kids all day in another language? It was challenging.
Katy
That’s a good question. Did you speak at all the language?
Lisa Wilcox
I did. I learned to speak. I started learning to speak Norwegian in Boston. I was a high end watch dealer in Boston for a while. What? No, some people don’t know that.
Katy
Is that why you have a watch tattooed on your arm?
Lisa Wilcox
That’s part of it. It was part of the inspiration, yeah. Which I, funnily enough, just recently showed my boss, who I worked for as a high end watch dealer. I finally had the courage to show him my tattoo. It was like showing it to my father or something. Like, I got a watch tattooed on my arm. He was like, why?
Katy
He’s like, why didn’t you pick a higher end watch than the one you tattooed on your arm?
Lisa Wilcox
Why’d you pick that crappy looking one? Why didn’t you get a nice watch on your arm? So, yeah, so I was a high end watch dealer in Boston and I was young. I was like in my early 20s. And we did a lot of business with a fellow who had a Swedish secretary. Because, you know, I don’t know, they work cheap. I’m not really sure. No offense to the Swedish people. It’s bad enough that I went to Norway and not Sweden, right? Yeah. So she and I started to become friends. We were both in our 20s, and she had her finger on the pulse of the Scandinavian community. And so I became friends with all of them and started to just get curious about the language. And I found that I was kind of good at the accent, and I just stuck with it.
Katy
Are you always a person who’s good at languages? Was that sort of your thing?
Lisa Wilcox
It was. I always really liked language and studying language, and I think that we all know have that capacity to be good at language. I think motivation is a huge piece of it. And you’re like, oh, really? Tell me more about how everyone’s gonna. Language. Yeah, I think so. I studied linguistics in undergrad, so I really think that there’s this inherent ability of your brain to pick up language and patterns. And maybe some people are more visual, and maybe some people are more Whatever. The other thing is auditory. Thank you. I study speech. I don’t know it that way. Auditory. Anyhow, did I get. Did I get tangential? Where was I? I was in Boston.
Katy
Yeah. You’re learning Norwegian?
Lisa Wilcox
Oh, yeah. So then the people that I lived with and was au pair to their kids, they became really good friends to me, and so we practiced Norwegian a lot, and also we spoke English together a lot.
Katy
So the kids spoke English, too, or were they only speaking Norwegian?
Lisa Wilcox
The kids were babies. They didn’t speak.
Katy
They weren’t speaking at all.
Lisa Wilcox
We like to imagine that one of them spoke when I left, but I’m pretty sure he was just like a burp or something.
Katy
Yeah. So it wasn’t that you were babysitting kids that were speaking a totally different language than you?
Lisa Wilcox
No, just being in the community and stuff. I usually spoke Norwegian. I liked speaking Norwegian, and I was lucky to be in an area that was less proficient in English as a. As a community. So there was a lot of opportunity to speak Norwegian. And I talked to the kids in Norwegian, too. Let’s be honest. I did. I liked speaking Norwegian, and it felt like they knew certain words. I feel like you think that kids understand what you’re saying maybe earlier than they actually do. So you’re like, oh, I’ll speak in your native tongue. Then you’ll understand everything I’m saying. Get off the stove.
Katy
So, yeah, I don’t know what you’re saying.
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah, I don’t even know if I can say get off the stove in Norwegian.
Katy
You want to give it a try?
Lisa Wilcox
No, none of it’s coming to me at all.
Katy
I don’t know if this would be a question that you could answer. Probably not. But do you have any theory, since you’ve studied linguistics and you think about this stuff a lot. If a kid is being raised by parents where one is speaking English and one is, say, like in Tiffany’s case, speaking Italian, do you think it would take the kid longer to speak in general, or do you think it doesn’t really matter?
Lisa Wilcox
I think often it takes children longer to speak when they’re getting two different sort of stimulus languages. But when they do start to speak, they are proficient in two languages, and that’s really great for your brain. And what they find is that the vocabularies in each language are smaller, but not in a way that would be detrimental to their lexicon. So to speak, they would have full capacity in both languages.
Katy
They might just not know the word lexicon or something else.
Lisa Wilcox
Maybe they might not know those big fancy speech language pathology words. Yeah.
Katy
What are you studying in grad school?
Lisa Wilcox
I’m studying speech language pathology.
Katy
So why.
Lisa Wilcox
That’s a really good question. So, like you were saying, I’m sort of. I like studying language, and I studied an undergrad linguistics, which is the theory of language and the study of language with a capital L. So understanding how languages work, how syntax works, like the order of the words, and how sounds are put together to add meaning to a word, that’s such a poor definition. I’m sure that there’s linguists cringing like to hear that definition. But it’s basically the study of capital L language. So speech is not that. Speech is more assessing and treating and diagnosing communication disorders and swallowing disorders.
Katy
What are swallowing disorders?
Lisa Wilcox
Well, it’s when you have difficulty swallowing or eating.
Katy
All right, I was just seeing.
Lisa Wilcox
Yep, it’s just what it sounds like. Yeah.
Katy
Some sort of medical term. So when it comes to, like, speech disorders and linguistics going together, is there. Are they somehow related like the two studies?
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah, sure. I mean, there are people that have disorders and delays in every aspect of communication. So it can be anything from having difficulty creating speech sounds with your articulators, with the parts of your mouth, your voice, and your. Maybe your respiration. Or it can be something to do with finding actual words. Like if you’re trying to create an utterance, if you’re trying to say something, and you don’t have access to the sort of language center in your brain. That’s one aspect of what we do. And so linguistics ties into that. You have to know what language is supposed to be before you can sort of help facilitate language in someone who has difficulty accessing it or facilitating speech. For Someone who has difficulty making speech sounds.
Katy
The study of linguistics still, just maybe it was the way you described, like, raises so many questions, but at the same point, it somehow has paralyzed me from figuring out how to ask you those questions. Thinking about how a language is put together makes me feel like I don’t even know how to ask you the questions about how language is put together.
Lisa Wilcox
Well, I mean, how language is put together is such a broad thing to say. I’m. I’m imagining right now. The first thing that comes to my mind is. So linguistics is sort of broken up into components. There’s phonetics, which is making sounds like. So making the sound S, like S. Right. Just the standalone sound s. So just an S does so much to words. Right. So it pluralizes words and it gives a possessive to words. Right? So that’s two things that it does right off the bat. So if I’m trying to say the cats. Right. So that could mean multiple cats or the cats dish. Right. So that’s phonetics like this. Actually, it’s not. It’s also morphology. This is a terrible, terrible. I graduated in 2009. I forget all of these things.
Katy
But I’m following your train here.
Lisa Wilcox
So that’s also within that S. So, like, that addition of an S to the word cat, that’s called morphology. So that part of the word creating sort of a meaning to the word. So anything like adding an ed to the end of a word creates a past tense, and adding ness to the end of a word creates a noun out of an adjective. So that’s morphology. So that’s another aspect of linguistics. There’s phonology, which is the way that different sounds that we find in phonetics change based on the word that they’re attached to. So like cats versus dogs. So cats is a voiceless sound. It’s just S. You don’t vibrate your vocal folds to make it. So it’s cats versus dogs. So if you are to touch your throat here, you can see that the S at the end of dogs turns into a Z sound because the preceding sound has a voice. So dog Z versus cats. Did that make sense?
Katy
Yeah.
Lisa Wilcox
Okay. So that’s like a phonology. So the way that sounds change and phonology can apply to anything from, like, a tonal language where if you add a certain tone to a word, it changes the meaning. Like in Chinese, there’s tones. In Vietnamese, there’s tones to language. So what else is there? Syntax. So, like, if I were to say, I’m going to Katy’s house. That’s like a statement. If I want to turn that into a question, how would I do that?
Katy
I’m going to Katy’s house.
Lisa Wilcox
That’s a really great example. Yes. So that would be a prosodic change to a sentence to turn it into a question. So it goes from I’m going to Katy’s house with the sort of downturn versus I’m going to Katy’s house. There you go. You’ve just made like, linguistically you’ve just added so much to a statement to just create new meaning. Katy. I’m so impressed.
Katy
Somehow Katy’s house sounds less appealing in the second way.
Lisa Wilcox
I’m going to Katy’s house. Are you sure?
Katy
Can I go to any other house? Really?
Lisa Wilcox
That’s another one too. So you can add prosody to any part of the sentence to again, change the meaning again. So like, I’m going to Katy’s house. I’m going to Katy’s house. Wait, I’m going to Katy’s house. Yeah.
Katy
And if my house was bigger, it could be like, I’m to Katy’s house.
Lisa Wilcox
I’m to Katy’s house. So, yeah. So these are all things that linguists have written many papers about is like that little fun thing, right?
Katy
What about how so many languages change to have a male or female ending to them?
Lisa Wilcox
That’s so funny that you did you.
Katy
That was a terrible description.
Lisa Wilcox
So that’s called. That’s called gender. So that’s one of the uses of the word gender. So I wrote my thesis about that.
Katy
For not preparing.
Lisa Wilcox
Boring, boring subject for most people. So, see, so Norwegian has three genders, right?
Katy
Really? Okay, tell me more.
Lisa Wilcox
In sort of colloquial Norwegian, there’s really two genders, but there is a third gender that kind of sticks around for words like book and, I don’t know, cow. Like those old words have kept their feminine. Yeah, Wife, you know, things like that.
Katy
So what is the third gender, though? It’s like non definable. It’s just a thing that applies to books and things.
Lisa Wilcox
Oh, that’s the feminine. Okay.
Katy
That’s a feminine.
Lisa Wilcox
The feminine is sort of getting wheedled out. It’s mostly neuter and masculine now. It’s a man’s world, Katy.
Katy
And why was cow feminine?
Lisa Wilcox
I mean, I think you think of a cow as a girl, don’t you?
Katy
No, I don’t. I think of a cow as a boy and a sheep as a girl.
Lisa Wilcox
Obviously. Okay, I didn’t expect you to say that. I think of a Cow as a. Okay. I think of a dog as a boy. A lot of people think of dogs as boys, right?
Katy
That’s true. I do consider dogs boys.
Lisa Wilcox
And cats are girls. But no cows. I mean, think about it. They’re dairy cows. They’re. They’re girls.
Katy
That’s a very good point.
Lisa Wilcox
I think of the bull as the boy.
Katy
Right.
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah.
Katy
Makes a lot of sense. It’s early, and I woke up at three in the morning.
Lisa Wilcox
Yes, you did. I’m really surprised that your eyes are open.
Katy
I’m here. I’m here. Okay, so. But they’re phasing out the women.
Lisa Wilcox
You were sending a really confusing message about Norway.
Katy
All right, Clear it up.
Lisa Wilcox
Okay.
Katy
I’m gonna just have you talk.
Lisa Wilcox
Oh, good. Go ahead. Well, so I want to just disclaim that I wrote this paper a very long time ago, so it’s fuzzy at best. But in Norwegian, there are three genders. Masculine, feminine, and neuter. So each noun has one of those genders assigned to it. The thing that’s really interesting to me about it is that speakers. Native speakers know what gender everything is, and they don’t even think about it. It’s like. It’s like they know to add the component parts to the word. Like, we know that when we mean something’s plural, you add an S. They know that if I’m talking about this word, that it’s a masculine word. So adjectives match nouns. So the red house. So a house is neuter. So the word red gets the neuter ending to modify house.
Katy
So what would that sound like?
Lisa Wilcox
So a house is huss. So ret is red when it’s modifying a neuter. So would it red be if it.
Katy
Was modifying a masculine and a feminine Again?
Lisa Wilcox
Okay, yeah.
Katy
Interesting.
Lisa Wilcox
And in fact, your microphone says it’s like. It’s like plural red.
Katy
Oh, really?
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah.
Katy
That’s the brand.
Lisa Wilcox
Well, it’s many, many red things. Yeah. Yeah.
Katy
Okay. So go on, though. I derailed you.
Lisa Wilcox
Oh, that’s okay. I’m so easily derailed. I’m like, what, one eighth of a cup of coffee? So let’s see.
Katy
So they just know what?
Lisa Wilcox
Just know. Yeah. So I wanted to understand if second language learners of Norwegian or not first language learners of Norwegian would have an easier time picking up gender attributes if they had already studied another language with gender in the past. So people who studied Spanish before and then which gendered language they studied before, whether it looked more like Norwegian or if it looked more like a Romance language. Italian and Spanish and French all have gender. They have two genders. The way that, for example, in Spanish, gender is a little bit more transparent. Like you can kind of tell what gender a word is going to be based on what the word looks like. So if a word ends in O, if a noun ends in O, often it is a masculine noun and there are exceptions. If a word ends in cion, it’s often feminine. And there are again exceptions. As a learner of Spanish, you sort of get that gimme, like, okay, this is going to be a masculine noun. And I can kind of tell that because of the O at the end. So I know that when I’m going to make it red that I have to make it Rojo vs Roja. So if someone has gone through that, creating that feature of the language in their brain before learning something like Norwegian, where it’s a little bit less obvious, is it easier for them? And then if they studied that first gendered language within a sort of critical period, that quote unquote, critical period of learning languages when you’re supposed to be really, really spongy about it, does that then affect how well you learn a third less transparent gender?
Katy
Did you come to a conclusion?
Lisa Wilcox
Well, my, my sample size was 6, so no, no. But I sure did make it seem like it when I finished the paper. But no, it, I think the consensus is that having a gender feature in your brain’s like grammar, so to speak. So if your mind thinks of gender as something important to know about in a language, then it remains part of like your learning apparatus. This is such a bad bunch of like, there’s linguists like that, if they heard me say this right now, and speech pathologists, if they heard me say this stuff, take away her license.
Katy
Well, she’s still in grad school. So for those of you who are picking up pen and paper to write, put it down. So then under that theory, would that mean that English being a non gendered language, we would arguably have more trouble learning a gendered language than say somebody who speaks Spanish would have learning Norwegian.
Lisa Wilcox
Yes, that is the short answer. Yes. People who don’t have gender at all, the understanding is that there’s a lot more difficulty there. And they found that like, for example, if I was a Dutch Katynd I wanted to learn German, then I would have an easier time picking up the gender of German than I would if I was a Spanish speaker that was trying to learn German. Because there’s more similarities, there’s more like one to one correspondence with like a cow being a girl, for example, in both languages. And in every language all across the world.
Katy
All right, fair enough. You know, it’s because I. I did a comic as a kid that was based around a pig’s life and the pig was a boy and he had a girlfriend who was a sheep. Although, you know, what actually happened between the two of them is a little foggy because I was, I was a kid and maybe they were just friends that like to look at each other across the pasture. But a cow did appear one time and it was a boy.
Lisa Wilcox
Okay, that’s okay, Katy. You know, I mean, as a kid we don’t have that really understanding of the complexities of animal relationships and gender. It’s all new.
Katy
Would you say that your experience in Norway has informed your journey since then as far as what you became interested in and why?
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah, so the linguistics part had a lot to do with Norway and my experience learning Norwegian. So that’s why I went into linguistics in the first place. I originally. So I moved to Seattle in order to go to University of Washington. And my idea was to study Scandinavian studies and I wanted to study linguistic interactions in Scandinavia with people who are asylum seekers, the sort of incorporation of Arabic into Scandinavian languages. So some people have written papers about Swedish and Turkish and how some of the communities that they created language evolved from it. So Turkish and Swedish, there’s this. I think it’s like kebab Svensk they call it. So it’s like kebab Swedish. So just certain words, and I can’t tell you which words they are, are incorporated into the Swedish language and they become part of the, whatever, the lexicon. So I wanted to do that with Arabic and Norwegian. But then when I got into it, I found it to be less what I was after. I felt it was going to turn into a really big theoretical thing. And I’m not really interested in doing research for theory. I wanted to do something more applicable to an everyday, like right now situation. My dad had an accident a couple of years ago and he needed a speech pathologist to help him with swallowing and with like respiratory support when he was speaking. And so I realized at that point that speech language pathology was more than articulation therapy, which is a really interesting part of speech pathology, but not necessarily what I wanted to do. And so I was like, wow, speech pathology is a lot bigger than just that. There’s so much that you can do to help people in a one on one situation and in a clinical setting. It just appealed to me so much more. It was just more of something I could touch.
Katy
So when we picture what you’re going to be doing. Where are you working? Like, who are you working with in the future?
Lisa Wilcox
Well, right now, I just started a new placement at a community hospital outside of Boston, and I mostly am working with people who have post concussional syndrome, so doing a lot of executive functioning, which is like planning and decision making and organization and symptom management. So when you have a concussion and you try to do too much cognitive work, a lot of times what happens is you’ll have symptoms. It can be headaches or dizziness, fatigue, any number of symptoms. And so what we like to do is to try to put some strategies in place for our patients so that they can rest their sort of. Their. They can do. Gosh, my words. Isn’t that. That’s irony, right? Yeah.
Katy
Is it?
Lisa Wilcox
I’m not sure. I’m not sure what that means.
Katy
People always say I use irony wrong. Like, I’ll say that’s ironic. And they’ll be, actually, no, that’s not ironic.
Lisa Wilcox
That’s not what I. I know there was that reality bite scene when Ethan Hawke gets into the elevator or something, and she’s like, who knows what irony is? And he’s like, well, irony is when you. When the real meaning of something goes directly against. What? I don’t know. He defined it correctly. Yeah.
Katy
I should watch that movie again, is.
Lisa Wilcox
What you’re saying, just to learn what irony means. And so should I, apparently. I was talking about speech.
Katy
Yeah. Concussions. What happens with concussions?
Lisa Wilcox
If you’re working too hard cognitively and you have a concussion, you’ll have these symptoms. Right. So what we like to do is give them a way to rest their cognition to. To get them back on track and managing their symptoms and cutting down their symptoms and being able to continue their day. Cause it can completely derail an entire day just because you were thinking too hard.
Katy
Yeah. So how do you do that? I mean, I’ve had two concussions, so I’m just curious.
Lisa Wilcox
Have you really?
Katy
Yeah.
Lisa Wilcox
Oh, my gosh, is this bad?
Katy
Is it gonna be terrible for my future?
Lisa Wilcox
I am a doctor, and I will tell you. Yes, you’re screwed. No, of course not. It’s. How long ago did you have your concussion?
Katy
I had one when I was in Rome. If you want to hear all about it, you can. I think the episode is called Hospital.
Lisa Wilcox
I did hear that episode. I think, because you had a really interesting experience, good experience at the hospital, didn’t you?
Katy
Yeah, it was okay.
Lisa Wilcox
Oh, maybe I didn’t hear it.
Katy
It was because the fuzzy Headedness did not go away for weeks, you know, so I was starting to get concerned that I’d actually done some real damage.
Lisa Wilcox
Well, it is damage, Right. So basically, the axons that connect the neurons of your brain to the next neuron, it gets sort of stretched out and damaged, and the material that surrounds that axon is. Has been sort of compromised. And so while it’s regenerating and repairing itself, you have to sort of take it easy on your brain, but you don’t want to shut off your brain, which is what a lot of, like, traditional concussion treatment is. You just.
Katy
You’re helping me get my coffee.
Lisa Wilcox
You. You want to do, like, active rest, kind of. Like, if you were to hurt your. A bone in your body or a muscle in your body was compromised, you wouldn’t completely stop doing anything forever. You would for a period of time, the initial period of time, but following that, you have to condition yourself to return to normal. Right. So you wouldn’t expect that if you tore your ACL or something, that you would just sit quietly for six weeks and then stand up and run a marathon. You know, you have to get back to it. So what we do is we teach people how to increase their cognitive load, whether time wise or load wise, to sort of get them back up and running. Yeah.
Katy
And does it matter at all now? I’m diverting into my own problems, and we are running out of time, so I will divert quickly. Does it matter if you’ve gotten the concussion on the same side of the head twice?
Lisa Wilcox
I am not qualified to answer that question. I don’t know, you know, sometimes I.
Katy
Feel like that side of my head just feels different than the other side. I don’t.
Lisa Wilcox
Did you have imaging done of your brain?
Katy
Not for a long time, but. But not since. No, not since the second concussion. No.
Lisa Wilcox
Okay. So that’s.
Katy
Boy, should I be.
Lisa Wilcox
I know. My face goes stark like. You didn’t have pictures taken? My supervisor. My supervisor, who is. She’s, like, in her early 30s. She’s super cool. Well, I shouldn’t. She’s really cool.
Katy
Fine to say that.
Lisa Wilcox
Anyhow, she always says she’s a real stickler about if you hit your head, take a picture. If you hit your head, get a CT scan, get a. Get an mri, get something, just because you never know. And of course, she’s a speech pathologist who. It helps people with concussions every day. And so that’s something that’s on the brain, so to speak, for her. And so she’s. She’s just a real Stickler about that. Get a picture taken.
Katy
All right. So it’s not too late. Maybe I’ll.
Lisa Wilcox
It was like a year ago.
Katy
Yeah. Two years ago maybe.
Lisa Wilcox
You’re probably not having a hemorrhage or anything. We would know by now.
Katy
Good. Okay. Do you think you’ll ever live overseas again? Is that something that you want to do?
Lisa Wilcox
Yeah, that’s one of the appeals to the field that I’m in. I can do speech pathology. As far as the swallowing goes, I can do that anywhere. I think about going back to Norway where they’ll let me stay for more than three months because that’s just been the hugest difficulty for so many years. I had a friend and I still have this friend who runs a. It’s called Robua. And it’s basically fisherman’s housing from the old days. And they’ve converted it to a really beautiful place to stay, like vacation rentals. And she was like, oh, it would be great for you to come for a year. She travels a lot to South America. It would be great for you to come and be able to run the place. And. And we’d love to hire you for a year. And we went through all of the immigration stuff and it just. They just said no, they just wouldn’t. There was no reason that I should be doing it and not somebody else. And we went through all the appropriate channels and I speak the language and I have hotel and restaurant experience and they just didn’t think that it was enough. So as a licensed professional, I think I’d have a little easier time getting to spend a year in Norway doing work with the geriatric community or something.
Katy
Well, we should leave it there. I’m going to go get my brain scanned.
Lisa Wilcox
I’m going to go look up the definition of linguistics and irony. And irony.
Katy
Thank you, Lisa.
Lisa Wilcox
Thank you, Katy.
Katy
All right. This is the bittersweet life. I’m Katy Sewall. Bye. If you love the show, help spread the word to others by giving us a quick five star review wherever you listen. We love reading your comments and compliments. They are like fuel to the work. Thanks for taking the time.