The Pressure Cooker

And suddenly the semester is finished. There were many times this semester that I thought I wasn't going to make it and that I wasn't cut out to be an SLP. Most of these moments were outside of the therapy room and involved paperwork, but inside of the therapy room, I morphed from a very unsure, anxious-filled student into a more confident, heck-yeah-I-can-do-this clinician. I love doing therapy. I love the fact that I can go in to a session with a plan of action and the ability to modify it on the fly. I love trying to figure out what will help my clients the most and give them support they need while fostering independence.

So, what made this semester so difficult? All of my spare time was devoted to clinic and my clients. My other

Clinic 1 almost finished?! How did I survive?

My Top 10 Tips for Surviving Clinic

1. Be prepared to feel like you don’t know what you are doing… because really, you don’t know what you are doing. You are going to make mistakes and that’s okay.

2. This needs to be said again: be okay with #1. Or at least know that you will be okay with #1. We’ve all been there.

And all the C.E.s (clinical educators) have tissues in their offices for emotional breakdowns. Again, we’ve all been there.

3. Research your client’s communication impairment(s) and learn all you can about the etiology, assessment and treatment of their disorder(s). A good place to start is joining speechpathology.com. It is $49 for students for a year membership and it has a wealth of information.

(It’s also a great place to brush up on information from classes you haven’t had in a while or that too briefly covered a topic area. This site can help when you are preparing for your internships or even the praxis. I will definitely be using it for both my internship interviews and praxis study).

Anxious in East Michigan...

So my semester has been off and running for almost 3 weeks now and I am feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and have had a lot of self-doubt creep in. The self-doubt has been there for a while, but has been only a small little voice whispering in my ear... now it's in full shout mode. Part of it has to do with the amount of time I have to commit to my grad assistant position and being able to manage my time effectively. The other part has to do with being in clinic this semester. Clinic is all consuming and I sometimes forget that I have 2 other classes that need my attention too.

I started off this semester feeling excited with only a slight case of nerves... and then I had my first diagnostic session with my (adorable!!) client this past week and it was a slightly chaotic blur where I attempted to take

The end is in sight!

The end of my first semester in grad school is in sight!  There's lots to do between now and my last final, but it's good to be almost finished.  A lot of this semester has felt like review, which means that Utah State got me off to a good solid start. 

   

There have been a few unexpected surprises this semester, the biggest being a much longer time in grad school than expected (7 semesters vs the typical 5 semesters of most programs).  The other unexpected surprise is a very unorganized professor (who teaches two of my classes this semester) and her very specifically-vague directions with a dash of inconsistent grading.  Yes, specifically-vague... and sometimes the inconsistent grading was in my favor and other times it was not.  I definitely have higher expectations for grad school professors... but, yeah... moving on.

Next semester should have a bit more new information and I will also one step closer to getting clinic hours.  I can't wait to get into clinic!

Just ordered these...

It will feel like Christmas when I get them!

Pinteresting…

I’ve become a pinterest addict!  I’m constantly pinning things to use in future classes as well as scouring pinterest for ideas to use in clinic - well, when I finally get to start clinic that is.  It’s such a great resource for so many things, but I'm really loving all the SLP related boards on there.  :) 

Clinical - It's okay to suck... a 2018 UPDATE :)

Clinic is always on my mind... even though we don't start clinic until our 3rd semester at Eastern, I think about what it will be like to work with a client, in particular a child in an SLP clinic setting.  I have lots of experience working with kids: 5 years teaching English in South Korea, just over 2 years at a daycare, and now at the Children's Institute at Eastern.  I'm sure it will translate at least a little if not a lot into the clinical setting, especially behavior management, but the paperwork, goals, and actual therapy...

These next two semesters are supposed to be preparing us for clinic, we have Clinical Methods in SLP this semester (my favorite class!) and next semester we will be taking Diagnostic methods which seems pretty comprehensive: procedures and routines used in the evaluation of speech and language disorders in children. Emphasis on familiarization with available evaluative tools, interviewing procedures, case analysis, test interpretation and report writing.  I feel I should be well prepared to go into clinic, but... yeah, I think no matter prepared you feel, I'm sure the first time will be nerve-wracking.     

Came across this blog post on tumblr:

It’s okay to suck: a story of my first client.

http://popslp.tumblr.com/post/33100986731/its-okay-to-suck-a-story-of-my-first-client

I just got to remember... it's okay to suck, at least at first.

UPDATE - 01/13/2018... Wow, 2018 already! Such a long journey from this post to where I am now... so the above link to "It's okay to suck: a story of my first client" no longer works and it looks like the post no longer exists so I wanted to say a few words (or more!) about being okay to suck.

From your very first client to your 100th to your 1000th and beyond, you will have times you "suck". This will happen less often as you gain more experience, but I don't think this feeling ever completely goes away. This is not a bad thing because we always need to improve and learn and grow.

No two clients will ever be completely the same. There will be times where you will be hit, spit on, kicked, yelled at, ignored, and you feel like all you are doing is trying to manage behavior. Sometimes just getting a child to even interact with you feels like it's impossible. There will be tears and screams (the clients hopefully and not yours... at least not until you get home!) and times where you feel like you are failing because the progress is so slow or there is regression or... yeah, you will have times that you feel incompetent. It happens to all of us and it's okay.

There are many frustrations in this field (hello redundant mountains of paperwork, never ending meetings, and a few other things), but there are also so many moments of joy. The AHA! moments, the smiles and giggles, the connections you get to make with our clients and if you are lucky, their families as well, all the little and big moments.

Just gotta keep growing and learning...

Clinic

Many of my former classmates from USU are posting about their clinic requirements and are already seeing clients in their first semester.  From what I’ve read about SLP graduate programs, clinic in the first semester is the norm.  Not at Eastern Michigan.  I won’t start at the university clinic until my 3rd semester and even before I can start, I will have to take and pass the Clinical Readiness Test with a score of at least a 85%.  If I pass and after I complete my university clinic, I will have a choice of either 2 medical externship placements (1 adult, 1 child) OR an adult medical placement and a school OR an adult medical placement and a school placement while pursuing a teaching credential. I like it that we get to ease into it all, but at the same time I am kinda itching to get “my hands dirty.”