music, therapy, and me

Spring break is over, so it is time to head back into the work routine. Part of that work routine is reviewing my internship program and setting things up for my next intern (#36 coming in June, and I am thinking deeply about if I want an intern #37). My current focus is to develop my self-study courses for my interns to do during breaks - if they choose those tracts. The tracts that I am thinking of will probably include changes in assignments across the entire program, so I have to figure out what I want my interns to know at the end of their internships to figure out how I am going to get them there. That's the way that competency-based education works - starting from the ending and then working backwards to develop the tasks, assignments, and learning objectives of each assignment. All things should be related to the desired level of competence. Period. Without this type of ending focus, students are not always aware of why they are learning what they are learning. Another part...

It is Friday, and this is a late post because I FINALLY GOT SOME SLEEP! I fell asleep around 7:30 last night and slept until 3am, got up and used the bathroom, watched some videos until 5 and then flipped over and slept again until 7:45. I have a little less than an hour to get ready for an eye examination and blog and all that. I am still exhausted, but at least I was able to sleep for an extended amount of time. Having the occasional night where I do not get much sleep is not completely unusual for me, but two nights in a row is VERY unusual. I blame my depression (appears that I do this every summer with high temperatures and soggy air) and my current emotional state for all of this. Yesterday, I had a couple of wins. I was able to change a system where I really was getting screwed over as well as acknowledgement of a service delivery system that I organized for our new vocational program. I'm not sure that anyone other than the two of us who discussed this know that it is my sy...

I often find myself writing a post titled this at about this time every year. It is almost the end of the regular school year - we have three more days - and I usually start my reflection process a little before all of this stuff happens, but this is not a usual type of year, so I'm a bit late. One of the things that always goes through my head at this point of the school year is how much my teachers must have been happy to see the end of me and my classmates every year. Until I started to work in a school, I did not realize that teachers looked forward to the same things that I looked forward to - the start of school, breaks, the end of every year. Now, my students have a little bit of a different type of situation since we don't really have grades or the end of anything, but I still feel those same feelings of excitement and closure every year that I am a school-based music therapist. This year is a little bit different but only a little bit because I am still working i...

I am my own worst critic. Anyone else find that to be true? No other person ever seems to think that my failings are as catastrophic as I find them to be. I lie awake and think about every misstep that I have taken in my life and I end up in anxiety patterns that interrupt lots of other situations. This seems to be a trend in those of us who are music therapists. We are naturally drawn to be with others. We love music so much that we want to share it with everyone in a way that allows those others to experience music with a therapeutic benefit. We constantly face skeptics and naysayers and people who think that they can do what we do because they have made a playlist. We fight for recognition in almost every interaction that we have with other people, and it can become exhausting. We often figure that our lack of recognition has much to do with our selves rather than with our society, and that is easy to personalize to the point of fatigue. I have to stop and remind myself that...