Spend Time Creating: Four Out of Five...Again

Going into work yesterday morning, I had not written any of the five TMEs that I wanted to finish this week. Knowing that Friday is my day to do so much planning and preparation, I was a bit concerned that my goal would not be even approached. The day started with me doing some task box brainstorming from the floor of my clinic while my intern did documentation from the day before. Once I could get back into my office space, I was able to finish four TMEs from my Ideas for Development file.

My Ideas for Development file is a folder where I keep all TMEs that I have started but not finished. So, I have TME pieces in there. I finished up the four that needed parts and pieces that I could focus on. All four had music composed already but needed things like procedures and therapeutic function of music sections completed. It took me about an hour to finish the four, move them into their alphabetical folders, and add them to the database.

The point of all of this is that I was able to finish four out of the five desired TMEs for the week in one day. I am challenging myself to all of this because most of my last interns have not been able to complete the assignment of writing five TMEs per week for about five weeks at the beginning of their internship programs. I am trying to figure out why. I am not sure if they are unable to get this done, but it seems like they have lots of time for watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts but not for making TMEs. So, is this a difficult assignment or are they not sure how things are supposed to work or is this just a failure of recent students on being able to manage time? Is there something else that I haven't thought about yet??

I don't expect that interns will finish four TMEs in an hour. I was able to do that because I had those ideas fleshed out a bit before I started working on them. I expect my interns to transfer some of the TMEs that they used before into their files - they just have to develop them a bit differently than their university program trained them to do. I want them to take ideas that were already developed and put them into the format that I use. I expect that my interns will focus on writing down TMEs during the weeks where they are not doing much in the session. They have two assignments during the first month of their internship - 15 TMEs and a Diagnosis Information Sheet.

I wonder if interns are just not able to concentrate or are too scared to ask me for information or more guidance for how I want them to write or just can't do the assignment. It might be a bit of all of this. I might need to adjust the topics that I talk to interns about for #37. We might have to dedicate one afternoon a week to writing TMEs. I just wonder when we will fit this into the schedule... there is already too much stuff to do. I mean, what do I give up? Leading sessions?? [Sarcasm!] 

I am VERY tired of having the "deadlines are important in the professional world" conversation again and again and again with interns. Is this something happening in other programs as well? Is this a common situation with current students? I've started a poll on one of my social media accounts because if it is something that others are finding, then it is "teaching moment" for how to make time work for you. If it is not, then it may be more difficulties with my current requests - which makes me wonder because 32 interns were able to do these projects at the same time. I wonder about the most recent interns. Did the pandemic make everyone stop meeting deadlines? It didn't change the deadlines in my workplace...

I might decrease the number of TMEs due each week to 3 since I haven't been able to do five in either of the past two weeks. I originally did 5 per week because that would encourage interns to write their ideas and reach the goal of 75 (only 25 have to be original compositions - the other 50 can come from any source and do not have to be anything other than translated into my format) TMEs at the end of month four. Giving them 16 weeks to finish this task means that they can have 80 if they complete the assignment. The other thing that I could do is switch the deadlines for their special project and the TME file, but I don't like that much. I could get rid of the special project all together. Ugh, I am not sure how this will all work.

It is clearly time to evaluate what I am doing and changing things up a bit to see if the situation is cultural or just me expecting more than interns are able to accomplish...the problem is that I just don't know...

I will not set out to make anything today. I need to clean the upstairs part of my house because things have gone out of control. It is time to address that situation before spending any time on making something creative.

See you tomorrow...