Melody Arakelian | Honor Society®

About

Hello there! I am currently a CSUN student earning my Bachelor's in Communication Disorders with an Emphasis in Audiology. Come fall semester of this year, I will be starting a 4-year audiology doctoral program. Once I discovered the world of audiology, I fell in love. My dream is to find a cure for tinnitus while changing my patients' lives along the way. The end goal: to end up in an audiology textbook as the researcher who created seismic change within the field, ultimately bettering the world.

Education

California State University Northridge

Communication Disorders with an Emphasis in Audiology

2022 – 2024
Glendale Community College

undecided

2018 – 2022

Goals and interests

Career goal: I plan to be the best audiologist I can be and make real differences in people's lives. I think pediatric audiology would suit me quite well, but I do also enjoy spending time with the elderly. Though I'm not sure which setting and which age group I'd prefer to work in, I do plan to continue speaking at schools and educating kids about hearing loss prevention. I also plan to earn my PhD and become a researcher.
Graduate school interests: I plan on continuing my time at CSUN for 4 more years to earn my doctorate in audiology (AuD). After I earn my AuD, I'd like to work for a while then return to school for my PhD in audiology.
Outside the classroom: I enjoy drawing in realism and making timelapse videos of my process. I love reading books, playing guitar and piano, gaming on my xbox, and exercising. I am also a little obsessed with chess. I recently joined my school's chess club and have high hopes of reaching grandmaster one day!

Volunteering

I recently volunteered a few hours of my time to speak to four 5th and 6th grade classrooms about hearing loss prevention. I made a Google Slide presentation, a Kahoot game, and I brought the kids fidget toys as a reward for answering my questions correctly. In the presentation I explained how we hear, how we lose our hearing from loud noises, what counts as dangerous decibel levels, and how to prevent hearing loss. I also gave a couple of serious statistics and explained how hearing loss can also lead to other serious issues like dementia and tinnitus. I played a tinnitus simulation on my phone. After the presentations, a lot of the kids came up to me with questions, or telling me they loved the presentation and Kahoot, or even just telling me they'd protect their hearing from now on. It was a wonderful experience, I'd love to be a guest speaker at more schools.

Glenoaks Elementary School (GUSD)

Jan 2024
I've been working at CSUN's audiology clinic doing small basic tasks for my professor/mentor, Dr. Spayd. I've done many basic office related things such as fixing phone/printer issues, taking average of patient visits, retyping patient questionarries, organizing the hearing aid box, hunting for articles in the library etc. The most important thing I worked on was a 14 page questionnaire/resource list for financially struggling patients. I took a questionarrie Dr. Spayd gave me, I retpyed it out, and searched for ample amounts of resources addressing issues like food insecurity, transportation problems, childcare, etc. I divided the resources up by location radius. 1 set of resources for CSUN students/faculty, another for Northridge residents, and the last for Californians. At the end I included a couple of letters of advocacy asking for payment deferrals to places like utility companies. From this experience I learned that it's not just about caring for what the patient comes in for. I learned its about caring for the patient as a whole so they may be get the right treatment they need. If my resource list helps even one financially struggling patient Dr. Spayd sees and allows them to purchase hearing aids, I would be very pleased to have been a part of that.

CSUN Language, Speech, and Hearing Center

Sep 2023 – May 2024

Languages

English (US) Advanced
Armenian Fluent
Persian Beginner