Carrie Almir

Carrie is doing a double major with the goal of becoming a speech language therapist for young children. She intends to take an innovative approach to her work by learning American Sign Language and finding new ways to use stories and poems to encourage children’s language development. She recently wrote a book for preschoolers with special needs in which she hand sewed an interactive storybook with sensory and motor activities.

Both her part-time employment and her volunteer work relate to her commitment to this career path. She works at the YMCA of San Diego County as a preschool aide where her myriad duties include preparing teaching materials and engaging and supervising the children. She also volunteers at Includ(Ed), a preschool that serves children with special needs.

Carrie is active in Books Thru Bars San Diego, a non-profit organization that answers book requests from prisoners. She is a key event host and social media manager and hosts book packaging events where volunteers collect book requests from incarcerated individuals and answer by sending two or three donated books. She believes that “every person deserves the chance to improve themselves.”

According to Carrie, her “greatest academic achievement was simply returning to school this year after five years away.” She had to take an extended break when her father became seriously ill and is “treating this second chance with great care.” She is now totally self-supporting, so her almost perfect GPA clearly reflects her dedication. She is enrolled in Sixth College.

Creative writing is also something Carrie hopes to pursue, with an eye to becoming a published author of both poetry and children’s books. Language is “the thread that weaves together my curiosities. Linguistics teaches me the fundamentals of how language works in society. Speech-language sciences teach how language is processed in the brain,” and by writing regularly she hopes to put words together “into poetry that breathes on its own.”