This a hot-button topic in the stuttering community right now, as there is an increasing trend of non-stuttering SLP students insisting that this assignment should not be done. I'm part of a stuttering community group that is going to putting out a lot of resources for students and professors as to why this is an important assignment and how it should and should not be approached. For the purposes of this post, I'll try to keep it brief as to why. The student criticism is mostly in the vein of what u/ColterR123 points out - that the best way to learn about stuttering is to listen to PWS. This is true. "Disability simulation" exercises where idea is "pretend to have X disability so you know how it feels" is extremely disrespectful and problematic. Unfortunately, many instructors assign the pseudostuttering assignment with this frame, which is not a good justification for this assignment. It's also NOT what this assignment should be about. The reason this assignment is critical to becoming an SLP who is qualified in working with people who stutter is because: you need to be able to do EVERYTHING you are asking your client to do. The whole point of grad school is to practice clinical skills before you get into the room with a real client, so you can eliminate some of the most common fuckups that are normal for newbies. One of the most foundational and impactful skills worked on in stuttering therapy is getting good at stuttering. Stuttering openly, modifying how you stutter, stuttering while maintaining eye contact, choosing to say a word to stranger and not avoid it, even if you're stuck in a huge block. This often involves "field trip" activities where the SLP and client go out on the street and talk to strangers, while practicing stuttering. As the SLP, you MUST be able to model this for you client. YOU must be able to walk up to a stranger, block, hold it painfully and awkwardly, get through the block, finish what you were saying, deal with the reaction, and then do it all over again. I have never done this activity with a client where they wanted to go first. They always ask me to go first, walk up to at least 1-2 people, before they are ready. Even if you aren't a PWS, this is an intense experience. Graduate students have a lot to process when they do this assignment. I've had graduate students in the past write about blacking out - even though they aren't a PWS. As an SLP, you need to be SO COMFORTABLE with this experience that you can do it with a client and be 100% focused on THEIR experience - not your own. And you will not be able to do that until you have done this enough times that it doesn't personally impact you anymore. This isn't about you. It's about your client. So if you refuse to do this assignment as a student, what happens when you have a client who needs to do this very important activity as part of their therapy? You're just going to shove them off the plank and say, "Do this, it's good for you, I'll watch you from the comfort of the sidewalk over here"? Or you're going to try it for the first time, and be so overwhelmed and so caught up in your own processing that you are useless to your client? That's why this assignment is the MOST useful thing you can do to learn how to be a GOOD SLP for PWS. You can't teach someone how to make an r sound if you can't make an r. You can't expect someone how to do a Mendelsohn maneuver if you can't do a Mendelsohn maneuver. And you can't expect someone to hold a block for interminable painful seconds while talking to a stranger and then confidently continue on, if YOU can't do that too. And, for the record: within the stuttering community, specifically the community of PWS who have spent DECADES of their life advocating at the SLP profession and trying to influence SLP fluency curricula - this assignment is viewed as absolutely essential, for the above reasons. A lot of people are pretty pissed off that these non-stuttering SLP wannabes are waltzing in declaring that they know what is and isn't harmful to PWS...and then proceed to advocate AGAINST something that exists because PWS *put it there in the first place*. It is good that this conversation is getting surfaced, because again, a lot of professors assign this as a general empathy exercise which is NOT the point at all. It's good that problematic rationale is being called out, but it is a tremendous detriment if we throw the assignment baby out with the rationale bathwater. [Edit] OK that wasn't brief, but it's important so I'll leave as-is.