Being Internship Supervisor: Time to Become Irrelevant
My current interns have reached the point where they are doing all of the groups now. I really have very little therapy to do, especially at the beginning of the week. As a result, my role is limited to oversight and mentoring rather than active therapy. This is a difficult time for me because I am limited to what I can do in order to give my interns the time that they need to learn how to do this job. I will be spending the next month sitting in my office, taking notes and giving feedback to my junior intern and challenging my senior intern to think more for herself the way I do with all of my interns at this point of their internships. It will be a long series of sessions for me since I just cannot sit quietly. I itch to be the one leading the singing and being therapist. The only thing that really gets me through this time during interns' times with me is reminding myself that this process is the entire reason that I have interns - to give them time to figure out what type of music therapist they are destined to be - without my interference!
I am heading to work with some unfinished projects to finish up - some laminating and some organizing. I will be sitting in my office, working on my projects while still listening to all things happening in the music therapy room. Being physically separated from the music therapy session is one of the only ways that I can actually keep myself from being the boss of the music therapy room. I keep myself from interrupting by sitting far away and having tasks to do. It is about 57% effective. The other things that I do to remind me of my role are writing prompts to myself and posting them on my clipboard, sitting in the room where no one can really see me, and keeping the lights off in my office when I am listening.
I will be taking my ideas book back to work this morning. I have several songs that need to be composed. I have a guitar in the office that I can use, but that interrupts the session happenings, so composing is difficult when there are people in the therapy space. I will take some time in between groups to get the composing done. I need the keyboard and the clinic computer for this task. The benefit to composing with the clinic materials is that I can demonstrate that music is at the center of all that we do as music therapists. I can also do this outside of the office while leaving space for my interns to finish documentation and engage in their own interpretation of what is going on in their practice.
As part of my "to-do's" for today, I want to flesh out one of the "a-ha" moments I had yesterday about making a bullet journal sized assignment list for interns so I can keep track of their completed assignments and be a bit more organized with reviewing those assignments. I will also spend some time in brainstorming other tools for my internship program. We will see what happens in my two hours in the dark of my office today. My day will also include supervision with intern #34 and catching up with both interns about break and about some of the other issues facing school employees these days. We need to talk about safety procedures in our unlockable, very accessible music therapy clinic.
It is just about time to head upstairs, coordinate my water, and get started on my commute to work. Thanks for reading this blog. I hope that offering these glimpses into my life are useful to you, dear reader.
Oh, before I go, I need to grab one of the music therapy texts that I unpacked over break. I intend on reading a bit during this summer. I think I will delve into psychiatric music therapy themes over the next 16 days. Happy day, all!
Good advice and hard to follow when you are used to being the boss.
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