It Is Monday...Okay Then

Well...

My plans for this week have completely changed, so I am at home, in my own space, rather than being across the country, enjoying their monsoon weather and basking in time spent with loved ones (hello, loved one #2 - you know who you are!!). 

Since I am here rather than there, I have to go get some groceries this morning. I have plenty of food here at home, but I need some things to fill out what I have and to have more options for what I will be eating this week. I do not plan on doing anything other than going for grocery pick up, so once that is finished, I will come back here to do some aimless wandering around my home, trying to figure out what I am going to do with myself for the next five days. One of the things that I am going to do is to book my trip home for Spring Break! I will go home in 2023 since 2022 did not work out for me at all.

Ugh.

I have been wallowing a bit in self pity and "poor me" attitudes, so I am trying to shake myself out of it all. I don't feel like it is Christmas here because my plans changed so quickly. I was offered a flight that would get me in at midnight on the 29th, but I would then come back on the 31st, and that is not enough time to get to a point where I am ready to leave home and my loved ones to get back to work. My separation reaction would be SO much more devastating after only two days. It is better to use the money that I've spent on a trip where I can truly get the reminder of why I enjoy being an independent adult. That is one of the reasons why I want to get my next attempt at a trip scheduled up.

Usually, on Mondays, I devote my blog posts on things about being an internship supervisor. I have made finishing a long-term project one of my quests for this year, (this relates, I promise) so I have been thinking about being an internship supervisor and what music therapy interns need to know about the therapists that mentor them through their internships.

When I talk to interns from different programs around the country, I find that many of them have no idea what the requirements are - theirs or the requirements that their supervisors have as part of the internship process. My interns do - they have to since I am a former chair of the Association Internship Approval Committee, poor things. Since I am currently thinking about what interns need to know about their internship mentors, let's go into a bit of what I would do if I were to make a single format for every single internship for every single music therapy intern out in the world... Time to slip into Goddess mode!

'Tis I, the Goddess of Music Therapy, (one of my more annoying alter egos!!) and I am here to make ridiculous pronouncements about what I think music therapy internships SHOULD (back, demon!) be like from now and for always!

The first thing that I declare should happen is that all internships should be funded through grant or scholarship funding for all interns. This should NOT be a salaried position because the focus of an internship is to learn rather than to be used in roles outside of that educational focus. Interns should not have to go into significant debt to finish their education. Related to this, I want educational institutions to stop requiring music therapy interns to enroll in courses during their internships, ESPECIALLY if the interns are going to National Roster Internships that have music therapists who VOLUNTEER to supervise and mentor said interns. Everyone is paying money in this situation EXCEPT the university - and the university profits for doing very little. If that is wrong, please let me know, but I do the training, the evaluation, the gatekeeping, the mentoring, the coaching, and the academic faculty finishes up one clinical training agreement and turns in the degree completion paperwork. I do everything else. I do not get any financial benefit from having interns, and my interns do not get any financial benefit from coming to learn with me. They pay the university for the experience of working for my not-for-profit organization. So, this experience should be funded by grants and scholarships that cover living expenses wherever the intern ends up.

The next thing that I declare is that every intern takes time to interact with other interns and music therapy professionals outside of their specific programs. Some of my interns have a required seminar with other interns (oh, this may be where some of the tuition money goes...wish more programs had this type of check-in with other interns). It seems that those who can talk to other interns about situations find support and common experiences across all internship programs. When I have a dedicated bunch of interns in my intern webinar/discussion sessions, they find that their experiences are shared by others. They have an outlet for problem solving and discussion that interns who do not connect with others lack.

The last thing for this morning is that all internship supervisors should also be involved in a minimum of quarterly discussion/support groups. This is something that I think our AIAC should be doing as part of AMTA. There needs to be a way to interact with AMTA more directly as well as for information sharing across the country. Internship supervisors need to talk more than we currently do. Period.

There you go. The Goddess has spoken!

(You all know that this is tongue-in-cheek, right?? I know I am not the Goddess of Music Therapy, but I would certainly accept a tiara... if anyone has one that they would like to give to me...)