Talking About Professionalism

Graphic states, "All About Interns"

One of the things that I do as a music therapist who is interested in other music therapists is run free webinars for music therapy interns. I enjoy talking to interns about intern things because I find that many interns are not aware of their rights, responsibilities, and how to be professionals in the current work force. So, I lead these webinars on Tuesdays for whoever arrives.

This week's topic was professionalism, and we covered things like following required dress codes, time management, making choices about how we spend our work time, following policy and procedure, and other topics as appropriate. The one thing that is important to talk about during discussions about professionalism is fitting the culture of the facility that pays your salary, and we covered that. I know that this is not always the most pleasant of topics for folks, but my reality and experience is that people who pay you often have specific needs or ideas about how the people that represent them in various areas expect you to conform. Period. If you don't like their rules or expectations, then you can find someone else to pay you. Am I wrong?

Next week is Self-Care week. We will be covering topics of compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burn-out while also thinking about things we can do to engage in active self-care. This makes me think about my own self-care practices about every eight weeks, so it is a good reminder that I need to be doing better with what I tell interns they should be doing...

Speaking of self-care, I listened to music for a day and a half of commutes this week. It is interesting how I will go for months and months without listening to music just for me and then all of a sudden crave it! I have one playlist on my iPod right now, and it contains 95 "Me Songs." These songs are ones from my iTunes library that I love because they have special associations for me. I got an opportunity to sing along with music that I love. I also skipped several of those songs because they just did not match what I wanted in the moment.

We just finished up Teacher Appreciation Week at my school. I am included in this week even though I am not officially a "teacher." I am not included in Therapist Appreciation Week for some reason - I am officially a "therapist," but not for the purposes of my place of business...

Anyway, our big gift this year was a Hydroflask. We got to choose our color and then there were a whole bunch of vinyl stickers to decorate the almost identical bottles to make them even more unique. (I was glad to see that the identical water bottle fiasco of years past was not repeated - when there are 150 identical bottles present in the staff meeting, it is difficult to know who brought which one...all during a global pandemic as well!) Here are two of the stickers that I selected for myself. I selected a sticker for each of my interns, and they selected a "You are my Sunshine" sticker for me because I go on Cathy Knoll rants about music on a regular basis. It fit. It is an ironic sticker and makes me laugh when I see it.

The rest of the TAW festivities were things that were less accessible for me. There were two meals that I can't really participate in due to food reactions. There was a full-sized candy bar on my desk on Tuesday morning, so that was appreciated, of course!

I am thankful that I can be a professional in a place that will recognize my efforts to be the professional that they want me to be.

Happy Saturday, all.