music, therapy, and me

Yesterday, when I woke up, my house was sitting at 80 degrees F. For someone who has hot flashes and asthma and heat related health issues, this is WAY too hot for sleeping. So, I did what I usually do, tinker a bit and then call for an HVAC specialist to come out and see what was going to happen. I had visions of AC replacement and the draining of my already strapped funds. My sister offered a loan from the Bank of Sister which helped a bit, but I hate having to get money from other people. Fortunately, I ended up just needing a tune up on my unit, so I ended up not having to pay anything! My bank account is breathing a sigh of relief right now. I spent some time talking to my HVAC technician, and I found out that he has a daughter on the spectrum who loves music and talking. We also talked about the knowledge that he has that I do not have about HVAC systems and repairs, and it got me thinking about a current project that I am working on - interpreting the AMTA Revised Competencies t...

It was move-in week in my college town, so I know that classes are getting started and students are getting back into the routine of school and all the things that come with being a music therapy student. So, if you are a teacher or a music therapy student, check out this format for thinking through how you can develop ideas for use in pre-internship, internship, and professional clinical interactions with clients. Here is the format along with an explanation. Please note that this was directed towards interns working at my former workplace, so things might not work for every population served. I think it is a good way to think through the process of doing things in the clinic, and the credit for this goes partially to me and mostly to my supervisors over the years who made me do most of these processes and thought exercises over the years. Here goes... (By the way, comments, questions, and criticism are welcome here. Let me know what I am missing, what you have never had to do, and wh...

I am happy to announce that I have published the next chapter of my Music Therapy Internship Handbook in my TPT store. If you are new here, I would like you to know that I am writing a general music therapy internship handbook - one chapter at a time. This chapter, Settling Into the Role of Music Therapy Intern , joins the three other chapters which cover finding an internship, preparing for the first day, and the first day of the music therapy internship experience. All of those chapters can be found in my TPT store . I am enjoying this experience. I have always been more fascinated with how we do the process of music therapy than any other part of our jobs. The internship seems to be a mystery to music therapy students - it was when I started looking for my internship, and it still seems to be difficult to find information. Eventually, I would love for music therapy students to use this handbook when they start looking for their internships.  I am trying to cover some of the minu...

I spent time working on Chapter Two of my internship handbook - Becoming a Music Therapy Intern: Preparing for Your First Day of Your Internship this weekend, and I released it yesterday. This is a project that I have been working on for a long time. I have wanted to do some sort of internship manual since I started supervising music therapy students and interns. It came out mainly because it seems that many interns (at least, the ones I have encountered in all sorts of places) do not know some of the specific rights and responsibilities that they have and that their supervising music therapists and academic faculty members have. I have been writing this resource for a very long time, and I finally woke up to the fact that I can self-publish bits rather than waiting for the entire thing to be released at the same time. So, I have started. I am using my TPT store as the initial platform for release because it is easy for me to use. As I get more chapters, I will either bundle them or ...

I am finally accomplishing something that I have been working on for a very long time. Isn't it interesting when you finally take a gulp and do the thing that has been on your to-do list for years??  Let me explain... For years, I have been offering webinars and networking with music therapy students and interns. One of the recurring themes that has happened over the years is that interns are not well-prepared for the experience prior to applying to internships. There are some folks who are surprised by the fact that they have to do an internship. There are others who feel overwhelmed by the entire experience from application to graduation. I don't think that any music therapy student should start looking for an internship without a foundation of knowledge about the process and the experience itself. So, I am writing an internship handbook to help students understand what is going on in this process. I released the first chapter, Becoming a Music Therapy Intern: Finding Your In...

It is Monday, and time to talk about music therapy internship things. I will be hosting a visitor on Thursday who might become an applicant later on. So, I guess my thoughts about closing things down will have to wait a bit more. We will see. The primary purpose of this post is to advertise a new resource out there for music therapy students. This is the first chapter in an internship handbook that I have been writing for a long time, and I released it out into the world on Saturday. Please consider buying it, if you are a music therapy student who wants more information about getting an internship placement. It is available in my TPT store at this link . It includes a way of organizing information and a reproducible form for use. It is also only $2.50 USD. I hope to have the next part up by next Saturday - How to Prepare for Your Internship Once You Have One (title is a work in progress). This is a labor of love for me. I am constantly amazed about what music therapy interns do and do...

I am not an internship supervisor at the moment. I am on hiatus, and I have been enjoying the solitary existence. I have been rearranging my storage areas without having to worry about the work spaces of others, and I am reveling in the opportunity to think through things without having to explain them. At the moment, I am also thinking about my next round of interns while I am waiting for current applicants to finish their applications. I have several of them, but none of the applications are complete at this point. All of them are waiting on a letter of reference... well, except for the two who have letters of reference but no application. It is interesting what things are revealed to me in the application process, but I digress. I decided to re-up my AMTA membership at a tier that I felt was comfortable for me just so I could accept interns in this calendar year. I still feel the pull towards training and mentoring, but I am not as enthusiastic about our professional organization th...

It is here - the return of my nostalgia posts where I look back at a blog post that I wrote a bit ago. I select these posts using a random number generator, and today, I decided that I would start to select the number once I reached 24 seconds of number generation. Today's number is 3314 - a post from August 2023 - a recent look back.  This post is all about the topic meetings that I strive to use during the time interns are with me (- and, it reminds me of a project that I wanted to get finished for my fellow intern supervisors that I never started. Add it to the list of things that I want to do). We did some of these topics, my former intern and I, but we did not do them the two times that I would like to do with every intern. This is my way of ensuring that we talk about the administrative tasks that are part of being a full-time music therapy clinician. During topic meetings, we address how to do things that I do all the time. I would like to flesh this series out a bit more a...

Today is my first day of winter break for 2023, and I allowed myself to go back to sleep (fortunately, without the nightmares that often happen when I go back to sleep) and lay about in bed for a bit longer than usual. I am now up and ready to start the next two days of at home break time. The first day of winter break is always a time where I make lots of plans for future me to accomplish. I rarely complete any of those plans. I have things that I need to get done, including cleaning the kitchen. I also need to do laundry, pack a bag, and prepare for the rest of my winter break. I am starting my task list and am getting ready to start things off after I post this essay. Lately, my thoughts have been taken over by thoughts about how people learn. I have really been focused on current music therapy students and interns because that is who I work with in my music therapy job. This is probably going to sound a bit preachy or critical, and I am not going to apologize for that tone - mainly...

I have been through some interesting experiences over the past two weeks, but I am trying to see if what I am asking my interns to do is too much. I sat down and calculated the amount of time that my interns spend in direct leadership, in observation, and how much time I am expecting for them to use in session documentation.  In their 42.5 hour work week, they are leading 9 hours of sessions. They are observing another 6 hours of sessions. I anticipate about 40 minutes per group for documentation so, the amount of time for documentation varies from day to day but should take no longer than 6 hours per week for documentation (that is lots of time for documentation, but it still adds up to just over half the time at the facility per week for direct clients services). That leaves 21.5 hours. We have one hour per week for consultation and about 2 hours per week for meetings - taking us down to 18.5 hours left for practicing and assignments. To me, that seems to be lots of time to get t...

Yesterday, our President, Joe Biden, announced some student loan forgiveness amounts of money and another delay on people having to pay their payments. So many people have so many opinions about this situation. I can tell you that my opinion is that student loan forgiveness is needed at this moment but I have some emotions that are coming up with this situation. That emotion is JEALOUSY! To afford my foray into graduate study, I had to take out some student loans. I had to give up my full-time job to complete a residency requirement for my failed doctorate study, so I had to take out all the loans that I was offered in order to live. My tuition was paid for for that year, but that year only during my education. I did not graduate with my Ph.D. (long story about why, but leave it here by saying that I am not disappointed), but that one year of being a full-time student left me with lots of student debt. I spent most of my graduate study career both paying student loan payments and tuiti...

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...

It is time to go back to work after a week off for Spring Break. I am nervous about going back - I always am when I have a new intern starting. I have been up since a little before 3am, and I am starting to feel the "get there early" twinges of anxiety starting to rear their ugly heads. It is WAY too early for that, but I still am feeling those twinges. It has been a long time since I have had two interns at the same time - about a year now. I do this every so often when I need to take a break from being supervisor and to simply be therapist. I had offered a position to someone last year who would have filled up my time, but that person declined the offer, so I left it open. The second time frame where I could have had an intern was a time that I really needed to be therapist again, so I did not fill up the available spot. This is one of the tricks that I have to keep myself from burning out - taking time away from supervision in order to be therapist again. I have lots of in...