Demitri Lau

I don’t have to look much further than my own family to find great role models in providing patient care. My mother and aunt are career-long nurses and my cousin, who works as a hospital pharmacist, dispenses crucial medications to organ transplant recipients. During my undergraduate sophomore year at UBC, I wanted to find myself in a health-oriented career like them but at the same time, I wondered how I could do that with an undergraduate course of study in linguistics. UBC offered a related specialization in speech sciences that I transitioned into easily while broadening my coursework. I started building an understanding of how the brain processes auditory information in speech and other sounds. Specializing as an audiologist would offer me the opportunity to become knowledgeable about the sense of hearing as well as improve others’ lives with hearing aid technology on a day-to-day basis.

As a UBC alumnus, the School of Audiology and Speech Sciences allowed me a seamless transition to postgraduate studies without having to give up old favourite campus study spots. More importantly, I would not have to relocate far away from friends and family that I remained near to during my undergrad years. Additionally, with my aim of staying in the Vancouver area, the professional relationships that the school maintains with Vancouver audiologists meant that I felt it could offer me strong networking opportunities for local job-finding after graduation.

I’m on track to graduate at the same time as my partner in the UBC Okanagan nursing program. After that, we hope restrictions ease up for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Japan to take in the food and sights we’ve only been able to marvel at on travel shows and in the movies.