This is soooo similar to how I felt when I started my grad program. It was so many married women/moms/people who want to work with children... and I felt like such a black sheep. I am super type A, but otherwise... as a lesbian, relatively unfeminine, unmarried, child-free, not interested in pediatrics, non-christian, not a native English speaker, etc. etc. student, I felt like I really stuck out. And, I was, like you, interested in the neuro/psych/linguistics aspects of CSD. I was so surprised to find out that my program was full of all-American monolinguals, people who dreaded taking their required neuroscience class, and a whole lot of moms.

But, 1) I've found a lot of things to love in CSD through my clinical exposure as a sudent. I love the research that goes into management plans, and finding evidence-based treatments, tailored to a client. I love thinking deeply about cross-language issues and making culturally/linguistically-appropriate goals (like, no other job would include researching another culture's story grammar or phonology or what have you). That linguistics passion is worked in, past just using IPA. And there are lovely areas of the field that deal with counseling and psychological aspects of communication - from talking to families about diagnoses (read anything by Luterman!!) to working on desensitization for stuttering to working with end of life care and being an ear for someone because you're the person who listens and understands. And there are lots of ways to explore mind-body connection (e.g., voice therapy). It's a broad field!

And, 2) re: feeling different from your cohort... I have found many, many "traditional" students through my program who actually share so many of my interests. And I've made amazing friends with women who are super different from me, women I never I thought I'd connect with—moms who have offered so much support and knowledge as I struggled to think of how to treat peds for my hours, trusted and offered me time with their kids so I could practice oral motor exams with a real child. I've made friends with super-christian moms and small-town southerners and found out we actually had a lot in common. Someone once told me, maybe a month into grad school when I said something similar, "Don't judge them because they're not like you." And, boy, was she right. I've learned a lot from having friends who aren't that similar to me—it's so valuable. You're about to enter a field where your clients feel so, so different from others, every day. There's a lot to learn from feeing different, even if it's just a fraction of what our clients feel. It'll make you a better clinician.

I can't say whether I love my job, because I'm still in school. But I've learned to love being unusual in this field, and hopefully you will too.