Oh Where Will We Be Living?

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Internship Matching Program for internship positions beginning
in 2008.

Congratulations! You have been matched to an internship position.

Information on the specific program to which you have been matched
will be available on the Matching Program web site beginning at
10:00 a.m. EST on Monday, February 25, 2008. This information will
also be sent to you by e-mail on Monday morning, February 25, 2008.

Come on, already!

So, tomorrow is big day #1. It's the day when I find out if I matched to an internship site for next year. It's odd, because there are good things to come, match or not. If I match, fantastic. If I don't, then we're going to travel for much of the next year. The biggest disadvantage would be having to do this process all over again.

After tomorrow, then we sit tight all weekend waiting to hear where I matched on Monday. Boy, do I need to stay busy this weekend. I'm dying already.

Interveiw Update

Since we last talked, I have had mucho more interviews. The process itself is quite overwhelming. There have been sites that I have fallen in love with, but that don't quite offer the training experieces/supervision/job opportunities/etc. that I want. There are others that seem a perfect fit but that are in a location that holds no appeal to me. Some offer training and supervision that almost feel too comfortable and too much exactly like what I have been doing in my traning thus far. Others pay only enough to not starve. And some are in really really really really cold locations. Others are in really really really hot locations. How do you put all of that into a matrix and make an informed ranking decision?

I don't want to go site by site through my interviews anymore, mainly because that's not what's going to be helpful to anyone who really wonders about this process, and it frankly exposes a bit too much of my hand to anyone who just stumbles upon my life as I report it here. So here are my tips...

*Spend about an hour before the interview the night or morning before rereading your essays and the program materials for that site. Ask yourself what questions do you have? What rotations do you see yourself in? Why do you want to be at this site?

*Do not memorize answers to those questions that are floating around that you might be asked. Do think about them, plan for them, and expect them to be asked. But, do not become a robot with memorized and recalled answers. You're a clinician, a therapist. Use your gut sense of who is interviewing you to respond with the best and most relevant things that you want to say.

*When asked about what you're passionate about outside of psychology or the profession, be honest. Don't use this as an opportunity to promote yourself or the work you did in this or that campus organization, ministry, etc. That's arrogant. Genuinely say that you love to hike, or travel, or watch movies, or to shamelessly dote on your doberman. They want to know you're a person with a life that's not all about achievement or your work.

*Be able to talk about your mission and vision beyond what role this internship site might play in that process. You're not telling the truth and they're not believing that your whole life you've been waiting to work in that site doing exactly what they're doing there. It might be a great fit, but what bigger reasons make it a great fit?

*If a fellow applicant/current intern/interviewer acts unprofessionally, do no return it tit for tat. If they curse, you don't. If they talk about someone or some place negatively, do not sink to that level. Just give an "Oh really?" response and try to move on.

*Look around at the interns that are there currently. Do you fit well with them? Would these be people that you would enjoy working with? Look around at the applicants around you. These are the other people with whom you might work. Could you see yourself with them? If the answer is no to most of them, this might not be a good fit.

*Do not bash your training program. Think long and hard about what weaknesses you will discuss, because you will be asked that question.

*Do not talk about other interviews, other sites, or ask other applicants about other sites. Unless you're utterly alone without any professionals from that site around, it's going to put someone on the spot, and that person may not want to disclose that they got 1 interview, or 10, or that site in that state sucked or was fantastic.

*Wear a suit. Don't wear sequins. Be friendly to others, talk and have fun.

Stuck up, pretentious, and difficult.

On my round robin of interviews, I have been away from home since December 28th, with only a one day stopover. I finally returned home last night, and today it's back to the full semested grind. During my travels I have met some really wonderful professionals and fellow applicants who made my experiences enjoyable, informative, and energizing. On the other hand, I have had some bizarre and odd encounters that made me wonder if I am all the things that I titled this post. A sampling:

*An applicant who wore a sequined top to interviews. A handful of people who did not wear a suit to the interviews.
*An applicant in a gray skirt suit and knee boots at an interview at a psychodynamically oriented site.
*An applicant who fell asleep and snored on a drive out to a remote office at one site.
*The same applicant did not wear a suit, criticized the meal we were offered, and called vegetarians "weird" in casual conversation.
*Taken to lunch by a site with current interns and another applicant where separate checks were requested and we had to pay for our own meals.
*Been told many, many times "I haven't had time to read your (30+ page required) application, so tell me what's important from it."
*In one interview with a training director, "Wait, I want to grab my cigarettes, so I can grab a smoke break when I walk you back."
*Been asked, "So, how many interviews do you have?" by internship faculty in front of the people who will be ranking me.
*Been told by a chief psychologist that "I stop and ask about Lois the office worker's hip, not because I care, but because it makes her a better worker."

And that is a mere sampling of the unprofessional behavior that I have encountered. I'm beginning to think that I might just be too uptight. Are these behaviors not as inappropriate as I think they are?

Who, who are you?

Take one extended family, add a birthday surprise party for parents, throw in a healthy serving of interviews, and move repeatedly from one home to the other. While waiting to learn where you will spend the next year of your life, gently fold in time with the inlaws, multiple hour drives, and be away from home for two weeks. Let sit, and you get pure exhaustion.

It has been wonderful to be back in the area I consider “home.” Hubs and I were able to go to the church plant that we hope to one-day call a church home. I spent lazy moments with my brother and his wife, enjoyed early morning views of the mountains, and saw all my grandparents. I also had some great dinners with a good friend. I wish I could move all of the people I love into the same geographical place. But then again, that might undo some of the reasons I find them all so charming, enjoyable, and life giving.

So far, I’ve had two interviews. One was in a southern state in a rural town, a consortium of a residential children’s home, a state hospital, and a community mental health site. The facility was drab, and the people were kind. However, I found the professionalism of the candidates and the site staff to be lacking. I am all for warm, but I found them overly casual. I left the interview wondering if I had misjudged what I could expect from an internship site. I learned more from what questions they did not ask rather than from the questions that they did. The thought of training at that site, living in that town, and working with those people, well it was merely tolerable or doable. To be frank, I was feeling disappointed with the quality of the other applicants. Two of the five were from a distributed learning school.

Distributed learning? While these applicants are likely intelligent and capable, I do not feel comfortable with APA’s recent accreditation of correspondence programs. I just do not see how the 3 to 5 years I spent with mentors, living and being with people who I both loved and didn’t love so much, and having a faculty of one mind evaluate my growth as a clinical professional could be paralleled by submitting my papers online and engaging in online discussion and critique. One applicant even said, “Well, the bad part is that other people can see your work and critique it, because we submit all of our assignments to the entire group.” To me, the ability to give and receive feedback is instrumental to being an empathic and effective person AND professional.

The second site is a community mental health site that does traditional therapy, primary care consulting (a new skill area for me), and some day treatment for the persistently and severely mentally ill. I really liked this site. First, the level of professionalism was evident, yet the people were warm. So often, professionals who work long term in such agencies or settings are unhappy, burnt out, cynical and jaded. But these were fresh faced people who genuinely enjoyed their work, who wanted to know me. They knew my application, remembering where I had worked, with whom I had worked, and where I was from. The other site’s professionals were glancing through it as I walked into the interview and knew very little about me.

It was so refreshing to hear from a site that turns no one away due to lack of payment, whose eyes shine bright at discussing their desire for all employees to have a calling beyond the agency where they work, and for high quality training as a way of giving back to the profession. This site will be high on my list. The other applicants were appropriately professional, and you could tell that this group of individuals were well informed about how to be genuine but respectful of the professional setting.

So, I’m tired, but I keep on trucking. I leave tomorrow evening for another interview in a rural area Monday morning, and yet another on Tuesday morning near Nashville. Then I get to fly back home for one day of rest. I can’t wait to see my husband, sleep in my own bed, and kiss my kitties.

It's Been Awhile...

Wow, I left my blog on a down note and went away for awhile. That's no good. So here's an update. I have 9 internship interviews in five different states and Canada. I have interviews at really awesome sites. However, I applied to 18 sites, so that means 9 sites weren't enticed by me. Predominantly college counseling centers and the uber competitive hospitals or community mental health sites in humongous cities. Oh, well, someone else will have to enjoy my awesomey goodness. All in all, 50% is a really high return rate for interviews, so I'm satisfied.

The next three weeks are jam packed, with a New Year's Eve 50th birthday party for my parents that I am hosting with my brother, an interview tour of the Southeast, an interview tour of the Midwest, a trip to Canada for another interview, and this semester I also have a full load of classes, a dissertation to finish, and a life to live. I try not to think about possibly having to leave my friends. I love them so.

The past two days have been spent organizing and cleaning. It makes me happy, and my husband cranky. He sees no point when there are Gameboy Advance games to be played, XFiles Season 7 to watch, and new sweat pants to wear.

I have packing and such to do, so I'm off. I don't know how much time I'll have to post, but I will do my best to keep you updated on what it's like to go through interviews. Let's see how well I manage the transition between very rural sites and major metropolitan ones. Should be interesting.

I am impatient and possibly impetuous.

The waiting to hear about interviews? Killing me! I actually looked up what sites have application due dates beyond December 15th in order to strategize my plan of attack if I get an insufficient number of interviews, or none at all.

I often remind my clients that when it come to the unknown, we all remain very much like children. We imagine monsters where there are only whisps of rumor and worry that forebode nothing more than our own irrational fears that will soon be proven wrong. Children imagine scary and elaborate answers in the absence of truth. Monsters are borne to explain fears of the dark, storks emerge in the place of the womb, and absent parents become heroes and villains in the absence of knowing.

Someone speak the truth to me and dispel my crazy making.

I'm done!

Right now, sitting next to me, are my two final completed internship applications.

I should be celebrating, and I am! But, in a really low-key non event way. Graduate school is a long pursuit in the same direction, so to speak. Except that much of the time, you're sprinting. It's like suicide sprints interspersed with grade card day at school.

It's interesting all the things that one must hold aloft during any graduate training. There's internship applications, the equivalent of writing a 10 page paper every day for a month after doing months of compiling and research mixed with the anxieties about where you want your career to head and where you want to live.

But, I still have clients, and classes, and oh, that dissertation thing all up in the air, too. I guess that explains why my closets are heaping messes and that my eyebrows are in severe need of a taming. Umm hmm.

Take Monday, for example. I was seeing clients by 8:30 AM. In between client hours, I was photocopying my surveys so that I could spend my lunch break collecting data from students in a class where the professor was out of town. After a non lunch, there were more clients and the requisite paperwork. Followed by an evening spent editing essays and cover letters for dear friends who have done the same for me. Somewhere in there I ate dinner and baked cookies (ate those, also). I am amazed and pleased at how much one can successfully handle concurrently. I'm also abhorred by such overfunctioning. I often wonder what would happen if I just said "NO." Would things still get done, eventually? Would I see any ill effects?

So, now I brace myself for the joys and the rejections that will start coming soon. The waiting part is hard for me. 18 applications in the mail. I wonder how many interviews I will get? I could have some interviews as soon as two weeks, and have some interviews as late as the first week of February.

The Application that Could

I am applying to quite a number of internship sites, all of them selected because I was drawn to some aspect of their training. Some of them are enhanced by having several great experiences, a superb location, or some other aspect. I chose sites from all over, across 8 states and Canada.

One of the Canadian sites is a college counseling center, and I had my application done in plenty of time. I did express mail anyway, with it guaranteed to be there within five days. But, um, don't forget Veteran's Day. Regardless, the latest that my application was guaranteed to arrive was on its due date, which was yesterday.

But my tracking showed all day yesterday that my application packet had "Cleared Canadian Customs" sometime on Wednesday. So, I emailed the director my predicament, along with my tracking number and the progress of the packet, to demonstrate that lack of planning was not why my application had not arrived and asking him to still consider it.

But, I didn't hear back from the director, so I sent another email. Some sites make interview decisions on the day right after the due date, and this site was adamant in their materials that your application be received by November 15th. This time I attached my cover letter, vita, and application with a promise to fax my recommendations, transcripts, part 2 of my application, and any other documents required by this site.

But, I had mailed my recommendation letters to the site with my application, so I had to scramble to get together some letters addressed to this site. That was an ordeal. Then, I went to send the fax. Well, halfway through the fax failed.

I shoved the sheaf of 18 pages into the arms of my husband who I sent to his workplace to try to fax it again on his way to meet some friends for a weekly "The Office" party, while I compiled digital copies of the fax into a pdf file that I could email.

But, the pdf turned out to be 10.03 MB, and that's too big for most email systems. So I was going to upload the document to a storage place I use online that provides links where you can share documents with others, without that person needing to sign in. But, that service is only free for files up to, you guessed it...10MB. So I pulled out the credit card to pay the 3 bucks to host the document. But the first card I pulled out, the stupid CVV security code was rubbed off. I pulled out another card, put in the info, got the document uploaded, got the link, and sent another email with the link.

About that time, I get a phone call. Some employee at the site working late to catch up on some paperwork was getting a fax...well, two faxes, the one I sent and the one my husband was now sending. And they have a small fax machine, and well, it was overwhelming.

This sweet dear woman offered to trash the extra fax and let that be our secret. God bless her. She also informed me that while they are highly selective, they aren't inhuman, and that my application would likely be considered because they weren't on a strict time deadline or experiencing a heavy time crunch. Whew.

And, tonight at 10pm, I received an email from the US Postal Service. My mailed application arrived at 7:30 am this morning. Meaning that all of that was likely unnecessary. And I've managed to appear irresponsible and obsessive compulsive in the same day with 3 emails, 2 faxes, and one phone call.

I'm hoping they're intrigued by my obvious desire to be considered at their site, and invite me for an interview if only to meet the weird girl who did all of that.

How My Faith Impacts My Clinical Work

I am grateful for God’s provision in my life in the form of Christian parents, a Church that provided for spiritual parenting, and a rural small-town upbringing that protected me from experiencing many of the more painful realities of this world. Yet, like all parents, although the Church was “good enough,” I came away with my own set of wounds. Along with the messages of justice, faithfulness, and holiness, I took away from my religious upbringing the quality of being judgmental, an emphasis on impression management, and more fear than freedom.

All of this was transformed over the past five years that I have spent in graduate school. During this time, I came to a new faith experience through mourning the losses of my life and entering into my disillusionment. God has painfully yet lovingly stripped from me my false self, and invited me to enter into a relationship with Him that is based on honesty and genuineness. My journey to accepting that I am God’s beloved has been a difficult and ongoing struggle to know my self so that I might be able to better know God. Because of my unbelief, I had my very name, “beloved” permanently tattooed on my physical body, so that the identity I struggle to daily accept cannot be denied.

This experience of God, as a lover of my true self, has been instrumental in how I view the context of therapy. Based on this understanding of God, therapy becomes a journey toward self-knowledge, health, and restored relationships for patients. Regardless of our respective belief systems, when I enter into a relationship with a patient, I bring my true and authentic self. I reflect who a patient is so that she can see and discover her true self. By understanding and knowing the self, a patient learns about the Creator through studying the creation. Balancing grace with truth, therapy is a place to ‘bind up the broken hearted and to set captives free.’ Because of my beliefs, therapy becomes a journey of faith where change is assumed, innovation is expected, and rebirth is welcomed. Rather than reacting out of fear, I rest in my identity in Christ, able to come alongside patients as they wrestle with and through the questions of life and God.

God also calls us to mirror His creativity. Beauty, art, and imagination are instrumental in this process of knowing and being known. These mediums are understood as coming from the Creator and as a means to better experience, express, and understand the various aspect of ourselves, others, and God. Thus, therapy also becomes a space where I encourage patients to explore creative means of knowing and engaging the self through art therapy, mindfulness, contemplative practices, or role play.

I appreciate that God equally values the individual self and the community of multiple selves in relationship. God, whose nature is relational, calls us to live in a community of people where individuals can bring their full selves in order to both know others and be known in such fullness. I strive to provide such an experience in the therapy room so that patients may go out and engage in healthier relationships, participating in the narrative that God is telling through scripture, history, and experience by fully engaging in their communities.