MSPP Student Voices

As I type, I’m sitting in my home city airport, awaiting a flight to Florence, South Carolina. It seems like I live in airports these days.

Ben and I got home on Sunday night at 12:30, after a full day of flying standby from Texas. It took us 7 long hours of gate hopping to finally find a flight with enough room to bring us home. We flew into an airport about an hour away from home, drove back as quickly as we could, and fell into our beds.

Yesterday, I worked a full day, come home and finished writing my final paper for a class [which unfortunately, was due the night before], unpacked from the last trip and repacked for this trip, and then fell into bed again. After only 4 hours of sleep, I’m up and barely awake, waiting at my gate to bring me to an on-campus interview for a Residence Life job.

You could say that I’m worn out. I’m thankful for the wonderful vacation that my husband and I had, and also for the opportunity that this interview may bring. I really am. But gosh if I don’t miss my bed and a lack of bags under my eyes.

The plane is boarding, so i have to run. Wish me luck in these next few days!

Me and Asha

It’s been a long – although productive – week. I feel like I finally “get” what I’m doing, at least in relation to my stage in the learning process. My sessions with clients feel rich and productive, and although I still have a lot to learn, I now feel pretty comfortable dealing with uncertainties that arise in session. MSPP’s performance of A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer, which I am co-running, is coming along. We had our first group rehearsal on Thursday during which each participant performed their monologue, and we all provided feedback and discussed the overall theme of the event. As the event also features a silent auction, I was successful this week in collecting many gift donations from local businesses. Lastly, I had to perform a case presentation at my practicum site, and it went well; my fellow interns and supervisors provided excellent guidance and suggestions regarding my work with the particularly client.

All the same, the week left me cognitively zapped. Given that my fellow girl friends also conveyed this sense of work-induced over-tiredness, we decided that our late-twenty-something-year-old (non-eight-year-old-school-girl…) selves would throw a slumber party. Before you get confused or throw out some “pillow fight”-focused wise crack, hear me out. The “event” was held at my friend Asha’s place in Back Bay. Asha, who works in finance, actually lives in a nice, normal apartment complete with real furniture that she picked out herself. I live in some rundown-ish Allston apartment, one that serves the basic function of “providing shelter,” filled with furniture attained through Craigslist, the same website through which some crimes have been committed; most of my student friends live similarly rugged existences. So, yeah, I love being at Asha’s place; it always feels like being at some museum exhibit regarding “how non-student people with an income live.” My friends Meredith and Jackie showed up as well, and clad in pajamas, we spent the night drinking wine, eating, playing board games, and having spontaneous sing-alongs to Jeff Buckley and Fiona Apple tunes. No one mentioned work. Although it was weird to have a “sleepover” that didn’t involve building a fort, playing truth or dare, or braiding hair, the gathering was an awesome way to end the week as it really served to undo that work-induced stress.

So even though I have transitioned back into normal, non-slumber-party life filled with regular seven-to-11-pm parties and school work to do at coffee shops, I have officially denied and gone against the idea that people over the age of 15 cannot have slumber parties. So now the question is: how long do you have to wait to ask your friends to have another slumber party?

“No, I can’t get up….” my classmate mumbled in a muffled voice, as she turned her face to avoid eating carpet. Another classmate leaned over her, restraining her arms, while a third classmate held back her legs. The rest of us bit our lips to refrain from giggling at this demonstration. 

This was the scene in our practicum seminar a couple of weeks ago. In response to our stated hope of learning about deescalation and restraint techniques, a classmate volunteered to show us what she had learned after 5 years working at a school for children with behavioral and emotional disorders. The idea was not to attend a comprehensive training (we’ll have plenty of time for professional development down the road!) but to give us confidence in calming down angry students, and to know when and how restraints are properly applied, so that we may intervene if we observe them used inappropriately. 

This class reminded me of the rich variety in the experiences we bring to the program as a class. As a cohort, we have taught pre-school, middle-school, and high-school, lived in several different countries, worked a number of years in clinical settings, taught special education, overcome physical illness and injury, and learned how to make wallets and clothing out of duct-tape. We learn from our professors and supervisors at our sites, but we also learn a great deal from each other. MSPP’s challenge moving forward is to best utilize the previous experiences of its students, and to incorporate that knowledge and understanding into every class. 

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m currently in Spring, Texas visiting my husband’s family during his spring break. We arrived on Friday and leave this Sunday, so it’s a pretty long vacation. Long & well needed.

It’s been so nice to be in 80 degree weather again, wearing sundresses and driving with the windows down. We’ve eaten outside on a few patios and I already have a bunch of tan lines. I’m the type of person who comes alive during summer time, so it’s been nice to have a little break from hibernation.

Unfortunately, it’s been difficult to get any work done. In the spirit of keeping things honest on this blog, giving readers a real look at what it’s like to be in grad school, I’m trying to be real with you guys: having school work to do during your husband’s spring break is hard. Having papers to write when it’s 85 and beautifully sunny is hard. Forcing yourself to stay inside for an hour so you can attend a video conference with your classmates and advisor is hard.

I want to do my best with my school work, but that really takes some dedication, if we’re being honest. Nobody wants to be the person sitting inside reading when everyone else is out having fun. However, I know it will be worth it in the end. If I can stick it out these next four months, I’ll have a Master’s degree in my hands and opportunities at my door. I just need to remind myself of that when I’m sitting at the table writing my final paper and the sun peeks out from behind the clouds, beckoning me to come play.

from earlier this week, when my feet were just starting to get used to the soft grass again and I was ignoring all of the responsibilities of school.

At the end of last month, I wrote about how one of my clients walked out of our session declaring he would not be returning. I’ve seen him twice since then. During the last session we met, we ended on a very playful note. He declared, “You are kicking me to the curb today! You made me wait and we started late because you were with another client. Now I realize you forgot my paper work we were supposed to fill out…” I responded playfully, “Okay, ________. Lay it on me. How do you really feel?” I was relieved when he put it out in the air: “You don’t care about me. You’re abandoning me.” That, too, was still said in a playful way. The only thing to do was to admit that terminating therapy with him is not going to be easy for me either. We talked about how it’s normal to be upset about ending the counseling relationship. We exchanged thoughts on how hard it is to get to know someone and essentially make yourself vulnerable to that person only to have them walk away from the experience. He wanted to know what the “plan” was for him and I was thankful I had already talked to my supervisor about it. I assured him that a clinician was lined up to receive him for ongoing counseling, a permanent, non-intern clinician who wouldn’t be leaving at the end of the next school year. 

My work with this client has always had to be light and not-so-serious. On this particular day, however, the power of humor to broach a really tough space was stronger than I ever would have bargained. By retaining a very flexible style with my client and following his lead at all times, he has permitted me to poke, push and challenge him, within limits and with permission, as he made some really strong connections. When he defaults to, “I don’t like you right now,” that’s his way of saying, “This is uncomfortable and we need to slow down.” I pointed out that just because our work together will stop doesn’t mean his work is complete. Nor does it mean that the work he accomplished with me will disappear. As my supervisor put it, it’s like finishing one chapter and starting the next. I’m sad that I have to stop reading before the book is finished but I have been honored to be a part of this particular client’s process thus far.