Thoughtful Thursday: The Upside of Goodbye

The day has come when it is time to say "goodbye" to another intern as she heads out from under my direct supervision into the world of music therapy professionalism. I have done this many times, and it always makes me feel simultaneously very happy and very sad.

We've been preparing our students for the transition for the past 4 weeks. We don't often get to go through official termination of treatment procedures at our facility - students often come and go and we don't have a voice in the decision - but I do ask my interns to prepare my students for their absence in the next school term. So, we've been talking about "graduation" and how the intern will be returning to find her own music therapy job. This is a topic that my students understand - we celebrate graduations around our place pretty seriously.

As we've been talking about graduation and moving on, we've all experienced different emotions. We talk about these emotions, we sometimes sing and play through them as well (though we don't do as much of that as we could...hm). Sometimes we express regret. Other times we share joy at completing this big step. Yet other times we don't respond to any sort of emotion at all.

I insist on this type of goodbye because I want my students to know that my interns are not abandoning them but are moving into new experiences. The one thing that all of my students have in common is they do not live at home. They all have had to move into a new experience - that of being at our school - and they will all move to different new experiences eventually, and I want them to see that there are times when I feel happy and proud of them, but sad for me to see them go. I feel that way with every intern as well.

As I get ready to send another MT into the world (no longer a MTI! - important distinction!!), I always have pride and dread in my head. I get nervous that I may not have taught what my intern needs to know. I am excited because this person gets to go out into the professional world to be their own form of music therapist. I am sad because our relationship has ended professionally, but I am also happy because we now get to be colleagues rather than supervisor/intern.

I have a month to myself before the next intern arrives at my facility, and I am going to be thinking about this most recent intern as I get ready for the next one. What things went well? What things need to be updated? I know that I need to delve into the new AMTA Code of Ethics so I can update my worksheet. I have some updating to do in my assignment list, my competency-based evaluation, and various and sundry other documents. I need to get training defined, and I want to have something different happen for some of the projects that I want students to do. Lots of thoughts are swirling around in my brain, so it is time to write them down, focus on today, and then develop those thoughts later on.

Today is for saying "goodbye for now" and for finding the upside in saying it.

Thank you, intern, for allowing me to be a part of your music therapy development! You will never know how much you've changed me from who I was to who I am and into who I want to be.