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.

Trying to Pack

Do you know how much crap you have to pack when you have 4 days of back to back internship interviews, a New Year's Eve party, random hanging out with family and friends (that may include going for a night out at a club with your best friend to doing things around the house or an impromptu walk, hike, or something dirty), bring all of your Christmas gifts for family, plus the books, music, and movies that you want to trade in at your favorite used bookstore?

A LOT.

Grr, still packing. 12 days, 4 interviews, 1 party, and lots of other events.

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.

The Mother in my Inbox

My parents did a great number of things right when raising my brother and I. Even more than right, they did some things spectacularly. Other things, well, like all parents, their baggage in some ways became ours.

One area where my parents weren't quite sure how to react was my weight. Never obese, I was always slightly larger than most other girls. I was taller from a young age, often mistaken for a child instead of my toddler 2 or 3 year old self. My mother got dirty looks for carrying me around. I remember conversations that my parents had with me, informing me that it looked bad for me to have a temper tantrum because I was 3 but I LOOKED 6. So stop it already.

Shopping for Easter and Christmas dresses was the worst. I remember berating myself in the mirror of the dressing room for not looking good enough as young as the age of 8. I went on my first diet at the age of 9. A 9 year old counting servings on a weight watchers plan, counting up her optional calories to have half a snickers bar. Sick, I tell ya.

I always had enough self-respect to fight back from the control and rejection. But, I also had enough self-esteem not to starve myself or to purge. So, I ate. Whatever I wanted, I ate. Thus, today I am a 14 not the 8 or 10 I'd be at a healthier weight. It's still wrapped up in issues of rebellion and self-loathing that I continuously battle. Add in my PCOS, and you get a nice one-two punch contributing to my excess weight that I both love and hate.

This year, when my mother renewed her Prevention subscription, she got two free gift subscriptions. Lucky me, I got one. She claims she sent it to my brother, too. (Seriously?) Now I get all of these emails in my inbox from Prevention telling me how to have summer arms, bikini stomachs, and toned thighs. It's like having my mother in my inbox. I'm sending her to SPAM.

Evidence of my undoing..

It finally happened. Last night, I had taken a long long nap. After a day spent babysitting the two cutest infants in the world so the entire faculty of my department could have a retreat, I was resting. I was even feeling encouraged that we could someday, maybe raise a child without maiming or psychologically crippling the kid for a lifetime.

But then, I saw it. It leered at me from the mirror. An inch back from my hairline, about two inches long, A BRIGHT WHITE HAIR!

I don't know who is responsible for this. Those responsible within the last nine months might be Professional Qualifying Exams, Written Comps, Dissertation Proposal, Internship Applications, Presenting and preparing that workshop, or the disorganized closets. But when I figure out which one is responsible, I will take my revenge.