Being An Internship Supervisor: Mid-Term Finished, Time to Refine

This is the first day of the second half of my intern's time with us. We reviewed the self-evaluation and my evaluation on Friday. We are sending it to my intern's academic director today after signatures are affixed to the documents. After all that, we will be focusing on refining the intern's skills and areas of focus for the last three months. I am glad that we have 1020 hours to work. I know that's lots of time, but it really is in the last three months that my interns become therapists.

I don't have an intern on tap for this month or for January, so it looks like I will have a bit of time before I am mentor again after intern #36 graduates. I am typically a bit picky about who I accept to my internship - there has to be a good interest in my particular population rather than a "I want to be close to home and don't really care about the population" attitude. My clients deserve to have people working with them who are interested and dedicated to understanding them - not just someone who wants to stay close. Since I am not required to be an internship director, I can be picky about who I invite to be part of my program.

For now, though, I have the luxury of watching sessions from my office while my intern runs groups and some individual sessions. I am doing my bit, but it is just a bit. This intern has noticed that I don't do as much these days - my response is that I already know how to do the job, so the intern gets to do most of the work right now since the intern needs the experience. I have the experience.

For the next three months, we are going to be working on learning about how the intern does therapy - not how I do therapy. There are times, as I'm watching the sessions progress, where I am thinking, "I wonder why we are doing this," but I stay quiet because I want my interns to do what they decide to do. I refrain from interfering in sessions because I want them to move away from looking at me when it is time to make decisions to making those same decisions during treatment. I want each intern to find their way of doing this job. 

I think that it is important to remember that it is my job to help my interns figure out their own way of doing music therapy rather than to turn them into mini-me's. I am fine if they decide to do things differently than I do (as long as safety is the first priority and we keep to the treatment goals established by the facility) as long as they can tell me their reasons for doing things. 

Recently, I have noticed that many of my interns do not think with an attitude towards problem solving. They want definite answers, and I cannot give them those absolutes. When working with humans, we have to be prepared for anything. The need to challenge interns to think on multiple levels at once is something that is part of an internship, but my recent interns have struggled with this in ways that other interns have not. I hope that things are changing based on how we are teaching our students, but I am not sure if critical thinking skills are being fostered in younger students at this time. If anyone out there has any ideas on how to do this, I would LOVE to hear what you do!

I am going to spend some time evaluating my assignments because all of my recent interns have struggled with the established deadlines. I wonder if I am asking too much of my interns - again, this is something that recent interns have struggled with while past interns did not have any issues. I am wondering why this is happening right now. It is easy to blame our interrupted education process over the past three years, but I am not sure that I can blame everything on the pandemic. I am not sure what is happening, but I think I need to evaluate what I am asking interns to do. I also might need to do some more instruction on time management from the very beginning of an intern's time with me. I usually challenge them to do their own exploration of time management, but that doesn't seem to be working out. I might have to structure their office time a bit more than I've been doing lately.

I do not want to be a spoon-feeder. I do not think that it is my job to teach interns how to write a professional document. I do not think that I should have to oversee every minute of an intern's time with me. I also do not want to be the type of supervisor that ignores deadlines. I am thinking that I might need to do some more thinking and writing about this circumstance.

To evaluate my assignments that I give to my interns, I am going to complete the same assignments in the next several weeks. To start with, I am going to write up five TMEs for the next five weeks (this is one of the first assignments that I have for my interns so they get into the habit of writing things down before their big assignment happens in month 4). I am going to use my office time to do this - not my observation time. I am also going to complete the two assignments that happen in the first two months - the Diagnosis Information Sheet and the Therapeutic Treatment Approach Sheet. As I am doing these assignments, I am going to track how much time it takes me to do these things and then double that time as a guideline for how much time it should take interns to complete the task. I figure that I can do things a bit faster than interns can, but these tasks are not things that should be taking longer than a week or a month to complete. I just want to try to understand why interns cannot seem to get these things finished in the time allotted.

Now that the current intern's time with us is halfway finished, I get to do the part that I enjoy the most - the opportunity to watch as the intern transforms into therapist with a capital T - Therapist! Some interns do not have that transformation during their 1020 hours with me. Most, though, have that metamorphosis during that time, and I am privileged to observe it. 

Time to head out into the world of work.