School

… but they finally posted my degree. I had to call and beg, on behalf of my soon to consolidate student loans, that they would do it sooner than later. Hey, it’s only a month and a half since graduation, what else could I expect?

I guess bureaucracy just confuses me to tears. I really don’t remember having this much of a problem with my first degree.

So I should get an actual diploma and official transcript any day now.

For I am graduated!

I would post a picture but Roommate took them with my cheap camera, and they all came out dark.

And now commences the week of… sleeping in.

falls dramatically into bed

The last remaining annoying beyond-my-control item on the list of MUST! BE! DONE! BEFORE! FRIDAY! was the change of an incomplete from last semester to CR, otherwise known as ‘credit’, otherwise known as ‘now I can get my degree posted on time yay’.

I just logged in at university website and it took for-frikkin-ever to finish authenticating my ridiculously-simple login. I’m picturing hundreds of other students fitfully refreshing their pages, staring at little RP symbols and swearing in the general direction of the campus, specifically the records office.

Fortunately for my sanity and the Grades Lady’s ears, when it finally loaded I had a nifty little CR where the RP used to be.

WHEW.

*breathes*

I had a to-do list, now I have a ‘done’ list.

1. dropped off resume at clinic that’s less than a block from my apartment and just happens to be interviewing for a new intern

2. finished two apps for two other county mental health departments

3. called a number of folks who said they were coming to graduation and then called to make lunch reservations for the group

4. returned items to a store for a refund — something I had been dreading due to 100F weather.

And now, I have the rest of the afternoon to study for the final I haven’t studied for. Wheeeeeee.

ETA: I bet I aced it, and got extra credit. Big Dumb Easy Final.

and:

5. toasted the end of graduate school with margarita in hand! YAY!

Hopefully, LizBee was able to memorialize my soon-to-be walk across the stage into infamy, complete with flapping graduate style hood and kicky heels. Twould be priceless.

It’s nearly finals week. It’s my last semester. I blogged my way through four years of school and really not talked a wit about it, other than whining about the bureaucratic nonsense and occasional annoyance. And I find that if asked to put into words what was best, worst, etc., my memories lack specific detail.

In other words, it’s all a blur. Whoa.

Too bad a lot of the stories are confidential material.

It’s done. Those last couple of hours I needed are done, done, done. Now all that’s left are two short papers and a final, and I’ll have the papers finished tonight and emailed to their destinations. I have a bunch of forms for supervisor to finish. I have a stomach ache. I have a new online project, which I am still tinkering with and will link from here later in the week — I’m trying to zap the muse a little. Heck, if it fails, it’s just a deletion from forgotten.

I made someone cry today. I have to tell my clients I’m leaving. This one isn’t handling it well. I feel bad for the guy, but oy.

1. Fourteen hours of therapy left! (grrr, no show people!)

2. Tummy not good. I somehow upset it yesterday, tmi deleted last night, and been urpy and moany all day, not to mention headache-y, but Excedrin Migraine rulz.

3. Parentals not coming to graduation. But, Female Parental was true to her codependant nature and sent Large Monetary Sum. Debating whether to follow trend previously set and purchase yoga lessons/therapy sessions/massages for self. Or blow the whole wad on One Massive Party! Or airline tickets to Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, or possibly (given current rates) somewhere closer to home, like Canada.

4. Field Placement ends on June 1, due to massive sweeping changes in the system with which I am unable to negotiate. I knew the changes were coming; we all thought it would be later in the year. But, no. So I will be shiftless and job-seeking, and probably doing temp work unrelated to my chosen field to pinch-hit with the bills until I locate Actual Real Career-Related Work, thus hoarding my savings account for a possible relocation to Somewhere That Is Not This Town.

5. It’s ALMOST OVER! ZOMG!

The shock, it comes in waves and squiggles and blinding flashes. How four years can feel like FOREVER. How quickly it can end.

Big Test done. Not sure how I did. Likely passed, possibly didn’t, not caring overmuch one way or another due to excessive burn-outedness.

Two measly assignments and a final left in my graduate school experience. And 17 hours of therapy, which will likely not take three weeks to complete. Booyah.

Well, more like in New Steps Toward Being a Real Live Career Person With Options.

The search for a paying job/internship continues. Four emails this week with resumes, no responses! Everyone wants a volunteer.

Other pursuits involve checking out student loan consolidation, gathering information on new cars, and racking up the no show appointments. I had one appointment today. No client. Other Clinic called to let me know my 9 am wanted to reschedule to later in the day or next week - since the parts for the car came in this afternoon, I said “next week” and will be watching them install a belt tomorrow morning.

Toyota has a college grad special for financing a new/used vehicle, so I’m comparing them to my Other Ideal Car, the Mini Cooper. Websites for car manufacturers have “build your new car” features, so I’ve been playing with them. I’m tossed — 10k more and get a cute little thing with an iPod connector, less and you get a Corolla with extras. Did you know the Cooper has 24 cu ft of cargo capacity and the Corolla only 14? What is up with that?

My mechanic informs me that the Cooper isn’t easy to repair, plus it’s expensive, plus he can’t get parts. So he of course told me to go with a Toyota. I’m thinking some test driving and haggling might be in my future.

Grad invites mailed, waiting for the drama to start. Wheeeee.

I’m starting to worry about the whole hooding ceremony thing. Last weekend I printed up invitations/announcements, because you invite people to watch you shake hands and hug and get the Fake Diploma until the real one arrives. Otherwise what’s the point of doing it?

I haven’t sent any yet. Oh, it’s not postage, not lack of time - I could get ‘em out tonight. It’s the knowledge that the instant those folks I want to invite meet those folks I should invite, things will get hinky. I will be mixing an old boss, a current clinical supervisor, friends of various origin, Roommate, and my family. And of course I am quite specifically concerned about my mother. My brother and his wife walk in the daylight with the rest of the world and have decent manners, and they’ll keep adopted nephew under control. My dad will be mostly silent and grinning ear to ear as he tries not to shake overmuch with the Parkinsons. But, you can’t control Mom, and she’ll blurt something out or cry or lecture me for eighty zillion hours after it’s all said and done about the quality of my friends, the EVIL of sharing a kitchen and living room with a MAN who is not legally my spouse, and generally make me want to slap her. I haven’t spoken to her in months (by her choice) and I’m sure it’s all bottled up in there just waiting for a trigger.

But. I cannot invite the mom I want her to be - the one who has a life other than nagging/herding/dominating her kids into molds she deems appropriate. I’m left with the one I have, who’s done a decent job raising kids with limited resources, left too many problems to resolve themselves, and intentionally ignored some of the most damaging emotional issues — but when it’s all said and done she is still Mom. Good and bad. I’ve finally recognized something — for her to change now would mean she could have changed years and years ago, and she didn’t, and that would leave her with a lot of agita and a ton of self condemnation, and so her ego maintains itself much as it always has, and I’ll have to live with it.

So I’ll send the invitation and she’ll come or not depending on her level of anxiety, and I’ll walk across a stage, say thanks to all and sundry, jump up and down a few times, cartwheel, moonwalk, and jig off down the steps with a masters. And if she warbles some passive aggressive thing in the general direction of myself or one of my profs, well, we’re all mental health professionals — I’m sure we’ll be fine. We’ve all seen a lot of dysfunction before.

Funny how impassive I can be in the presence of an angry schizophrenic, yet just thinking of my own mother in the same room with my crazy friend T gives me a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach.

Posted an ad for my current (part time, dead end, tired-of-it) job today. Everyone went off to a trade show and left me to pay bills and answer phones. Boss asked me to put up an ad on craigslist and monster, but it costs 295 to put an ad on monster and CL is free - so guess where the ad is? No bites yet. They said they’ll call the temp agency I came from if they don’t find someone this way.

Paid bills. Not so bad, paying bills. Most of them need to be paid the first week of the month, so there’s a whole month til next time. With Wednesdays free I might just find a job by the end of semester….

Still not sure I’m getting the extra hours at the other clinic, but I’m not caring. I have a lot of studying to do between now and the end of April. Hopefully with my schedule clear I can pick up other hours at the current clinic as well.

Tangentially, I am updating the WIP up there in the corner, Home in a Handbasket, tonight. From now on it will be all in one page. It’s still a draft, but there have been small edits and deletions throughout. I am considering further trimming but will leave that til it’s done.

Okay, so I heard back from the supervisor o’ the other clinic. She’s sorting out when she wants me, i.e. when an office is available. I’m not sure if it will be available. Also not sure how it’s going to work with the current schedule.

I have 100 of 300 hours necessary to graduate, six weeks into a 17 week semester. That’s 200 hours in 11 weeks I need to do. If I get 20 hours a week, I’m done. I did 17 this week. Oooooo, gonna be close.

crosses fingers

The school bought one copy of the study guide for the test on April 22. Now they are too honest and law-abiding to make copies for the test takers. This is a licensing exam in most other states, and a professional credential in California, and I had to pay 250 interest-bearing dollars to register for it. So, a little concerned about that. Thank you, Amazon, for second hand study guides.

And, on top of the absence of study stuff and the lateness of informing us there would be no study stuff, the school schedules the meeting to orient test takers and provide tips and tricks on passing it during my Tuesday class. Strike Two!

Job interview results: eh. Going through the motions, I called to check and they are still interviewing. 15 mins. per interview times two weeks? That’s a lot of applicants to review. At this rate they may make a decision… oh, about 2008. And I thought County Mental Health moved at glacial speeds.

I am millimeters from telling the job I’m quitting. Now, I really would do better to hang in there and make the rent (even though it doesn’t pay much other than that) because the rent, she is nothing to sneeze at. With the unexpected forty dollar increase, I had to cut back on the grocery trips. I am now eating those cup-a-soup thingies that I refer to as “styrafoam noodles” because, well, yeah. I went to the store tonight and got one artichoke, one package of sausage, and one medicated chapstick. Oh, and two half gallons of ice cream because I am a total sucker for two-for-one sales, and ice cream is the fifth food group stop-looking-at-me-like-that.

But the job is driving me nuts. I’m thinking, counseling is where I need to be full time, because I can sit there all the livelong day listening to people who have no motivation, no ability to self regulate, no discipline, no capacity for taking another single minute of the torment of their depression, and I can talk to them and listen and ask questions like “if you leave here today are you going to be all right? do you think you can make it, or should I call the crisis center and take you over and have you admitted? because we don’t want to let you go if you intend to commit suicide.” Yet going to the job and listening to the bickering that results from certain individuals not wanting to listen to each other and acknowledge points made? AARRRRR. Business is easy, people! Get with the program!

Which isn’t to say there aren’t clients I’d rather not see — how do you do anything therapeutic with someone who’s high? I’m still figuring that one out, because he keeps showing up that way. But you know, when you prefer sitting in a room with a guy who’s flying higher than the clouds rambling about his youthful transgressions and all the ones that came after that to sitting in a room listening to sales people argue about who’s really paying salaries here, and you don’t know what you’re doing, and come ON just do your job! Well, there’s a message here.

The only solution I see is drop-kicking the job. Being available five days a week for group therapy and training and client sessions will get me to graduation faster, and saner. Though poorer.

Mick was right, you can’t always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need. wooo! wooo!

The clinic is now more relaxing than work. I got to the Job Place after spending most of the day waiting for clients who didn’t show ( I read when that happens, usually something therapy or school related so it counts toward hours spent preparing for therapy) and felt like I ought to do some crisis intervention. Boss is a completely square peg, and Marketing Guy is… a marketing guy. All about the concept, man. The atmosphere was tense when I got there. I stuck my earphones in and listened to crosby stills & nash while trying to get the accounting software to cough up numbers. (Rumors that I was caught singing Cecelia off key are totally false. Really. I was SO on key.)

And now it’s Friday, and the interview is Wednesday, and I’m nervous. Like, this isn’t just trainee freebie stuff any more. This is where all those lectures on self talk get applied to the Self.

Self, you have a lot to offer, and you have as much chance at the job as any nearly-graduated therapist.

Two hours of yoga in the morning! Whee! Ought to help for a while, anyway.

I just wish the apartment management had chosen a better time to rip all the paneling off the outside of the apartment. I got home to a total mess, nails all over the walk, boards here and there, and six guys with hammers and power tools ripping nails out, hammering nails in, and toting plywood back and forth. My poor pets. The bird was thrashing around and the cats were clingy. “Eek! strange people! Big noise!” Then, “Feed us!” At least some things were normal….

… and I know where it landed.

I have been seeking a secondary placement. At first, I was afraid the clinic would go belly up. Now it appears it won’t. I say ‘appears,’ because no one’s said anything definite, but the atmosphere there is less fraught with peril than before. Now that I’ve talked to a few people about various placements, I’m starting to get excited about adding some variety to my schedule and leaving Dull Office Job With Side Order of Rabid Conservative.

I’ve spoken to two different people, one supervising a substance abuse facility where they also employ therapists — not all substance abuse programs are alike, and a substance abuse counselor is not the same thing at a therapist; I did not realize this myself until I was confronted by one who had a really shaky idea of counseling ethics — and one who supervises a clinic specializing in getting folks off the medications. Let’s just say that working at either place while simultaneously working at the clinic I’m presently at would be like traveling from the north pole to the equator every day. Like, completely different methodology, completely opposite notion of ethical and appropriate. Still, both have opportunities for play therapy with kids, or other sorts of experiences anyway.

Enter the voice mail. My phone periodically does not ring when I get a call, and not because I silenced it — and so it did just that today. I had sent a resume to a center affiliated with the county that does family therapy, child therapy and parenting classes, and supposed that I would not hear anything because it was a response to an ad in the paper for a paid position, and though I am in my final semester there are plenty of graduates floating about who no doubt applied. The voice mail was to inform me that if I was still interested I needed to call back and set up an interview on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Excuse me while I roll around squeeing for a bit.

There. Back now.

Yes, it’s not “I got the job” — but at this point an “I MIGHT GET THE JOB” is cause for joy. I could send back some of the student loan money. I could stop subsisting on boiled eggs until I make it to next month’s grocery budget. I could be a real live paid adult type person and not a starving student! Sometimes I start to feel like a second class worker drone. I don’t have my own office, don’t have a salary, don’t go to meetings…. Well, I could live without the meetings. But signs of being Taken Seriously would be cool.

And not in a planned way. Instructor of today’s class is evidently testifying in court somewhere, and since a major part of his career is flying around the country doing that, maybe I’ll have some Tuesday time once in a while.

Not that I didn’t have time anyway. Three of five clients did not show up for appointments. I spent the time doing other related things, like reviewing files and making calls. When I left the clinic at 3:20 I had a headache and a hollow spot in the tummy — given the nature of the symptoms, I opted for fast, caffienated and sugary, i.e. a frappucino from Starbucks drive thru, in hope of making it through three hours of lecture. If only I’d known class was cancelled I’d have come home and made myself an espresso shot instead.

I have this new device called an aeropress. It’s a handy little plunger with a filter on the end, but oh, the difference it makes in the flavor of the coffee. I was dubious but couldn’t resist a really cheap way to make espresso - the savings will make it worthwhile, because it will make coffee that tastes better, and give me a more precise way to portion out the beans. Previously I estimated and used a 10 cup coffee pot, and wasted a lot of coffee. Now I can make one espresso shot in less than a minute, add hot water to make a cup of coffee if I want, and make it stronger or weaker by either slowing down or pushing faster, and not muck about with cleaning the coffee pot. You press the brew straight into a cup, then rinse out the plunger and toss it in a rack. The filters can be reused until they tear, and they’re pretty strong little buggers, plus you get a year’s supply up front. Yeah, people say, sounds like a french press. But I was a doubter until I tried it.

The textbook I ordered came in. Guess I should go read it. After I have some coffee. Mmmm, kona.

of my Very Last Semester.

Wooo!

I need a hundred dollar textbook. Boo! And a thousand dollars worth of insurance. Ew!

And, I’m about to start cranking out resumes like crazy, in hopes that someone will hire me before I graduate. Eek! (That would really really help me get over the early closure of the clinic I’m at now.)

A lot happened at the clinic this week. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you anything about it. But I can hint.

1. I need a better resume.
2. There are a lot of phone calls in my future.
3. I haven’t panicked yet, but it may happen within the month…..
4. Four weeks, and I still have the cough - unrelated to the first three, but nearly as bothersome, specially since medical stuff gets expensive and I’m likely leaving the job in a couple weeks.

Also unfortunately, I failed to write a durn thing.

I just finished the final for my research class. Worst score I’ve ever gotten on a test. But, due to A’s on other assignments, I have a solid B. The first one since I got into the program… I’ll probably still make the Dean’s List.

These weekend one unit classes are killers. I sat in one for four hours last night, and have to put in another 7-8 hours today, and the instructor is the most repetative, babbly, vague and easily distracted one I’ve had in five years of less than stellar instructors.

I’ll be the one in the back on the internet. Or asleep on the keyboard. Gaaaaaaaahhhhhh, the things I do for another lousy unit of credit.

Edited, 11:10 am: Zzzzzz…. zzzz…. Almost lunch? wakes up slooooowly….

Edited, 4:30 pm: Dang. Know what I learned? That those case manager jobs I considered weren’t worth considering. Way too much work for near-minimum wage. That wasn’t what the class was about, but eh. I’m home, and wishy-washy scattered prof didn’t make us do anything other than write a page on the class. I told the truth. Too much info, not enough focus.

It’s been a while since I posted about school directly - it’s always there lurking in the background because about half my waking hours are devoted to it (the remainder portioned out to work, cleaning the $%@@! cat box, and yoga) but most of the time I’m doing fieldwork hours, which is essentially the same as a second job, minus the paycheck.

But here we are. It’s registration time. I cannot tell you the frustrations and pains and aches that our budget-crunched state university system has inflicted upon those of us trying to graduate. Two steps forward, eighty zillion steps back — last summer it was Summer School-Gate, wherein loads of us counseling students were abruptly refunded our tuition fees and told to bug off, no class for you! Thereby screwing up a lot of folks who had jobs lined up at the end of summer, when they were supposed to get that diploma. Then Fall, with all the jilted summer school students trying to jam themselves into the normal number of sessions of each class — milling around the department office waving advancement to candidacy papers, muttering of mutiny, we stormed the gates and mostly worked it out.

And now it’s time to register for Spring, the semester I wasn’t supposed to need — I have six units left before freedom. Three of fieldwork, three of the LAST CLASS. The LAST CLASS I will take in this program. Which the online registration system insisted DID NOT EXIST.

Oh. MG!!

They’ve killed summer counseling classes. I cannot exist on thin air for 2/3 of a year waiting for another semester to take THE LAST CLASS!!! I need to graduate and be employed. DAMN YOU, Governator! DAMN YOU FOR TAKING OUR MONEY AND KEEPING IT!!!

(which is to say, the 2 billion he borrowed from the school systems…. and while I’m not certain it’s really his fault, he’s a handy target.)

All a-panic, I speed-dialed my advisor who is handily the program coordinator. Who told me:

1. The class is there. Call the program office.
2. The national counseling exam (one of those certification exams) will be given on campus in April.
3. Don’t panic.

Well, I inferred the last one. I did as he suggested and the office lady informed me both sessions of the class were full did I want on the waiting list? GAH! Yes, woman, give me the waiting list!

Before I could call back with a bribe, she called me back and gave me a permission number. So I’m not panicked any more, just holding my breath waiting for the next Big AAAHHH!

Hypervigilance is one of the criteria for PTSD, you know? How sad. I’m developing symptoms because the school is giving me panic attacks.

Behold, I shall now attempt to drown my anxieties in studying. Or possibly fic. Which is going slowly, as it falls to the bottom of the priority list every time a deadline comes up, but is … going.

I just sent the crappiest paper ever to the instructor who confuses more students than any previous instructors I’ve had, knowing that it didn’t meet the criteria in the syllabus.

And yet, I fail to care.

Burnout! Wheee!

Back to the fic.

Busier than I want to be. Behind in homework/reading - which is not good, major assignment due in two weeks. Something tells me I will turn in a half-*ssed draft, and though this makes me wince, the last time I did so I got an A, so…. Still going to try getting through the lit review this weekend, if I can find index cards to help me be organized.

At the Job, I’m still trying to balance the books, which is complicated by the fact that Boss waited until July to let me start using Quickbooks, which is difficult to do historical bookkeeping in, especially when recordkeeping prior to that point was .. stuffing papers in folders, each neatly labeled by month. And, not all the paperwork got in the folders. Which was how I ended up with a five digit deposit that went uncategorized until mysteriously the invoice it belonged to turned up, at which point I realized that I had already reconciled May. Silly me, thinking a computer program would be so flexible as to allow for the deletion and re-adding and clearing of a deposit properly booked to pay off the invoice in question. Silly me. I ended up undoing the reconciliations all the way back to January, as for some screwball reason the end of year reconciliation for 2004 undid itself, leaving me with a long winding trail of wildly-varying end and beginning balances that didn’t match the statements at all.

If you did not understand that paragraph, you’re where I was at a few months ago, and I’m very sorry. Not as sorry as I was for me — the pain is quadrupled when the company you work for expects you to make it all balance, and yet, they fail to provide the paper trail that would tell me where the money goes, where it comes from, and then, “oh no! why is this balance sheet so off!” Because you wouldn’t answer those questions I was asking. Remember being annoyed when I interrupted your deep contemplation of what you wanted at Starbucks? That question. It went something like “do you remember what this two grand was paying for? I need to know so the reports don’t look funny, cause otherwise it will wind up being “uncategorized…”

So, yeah. My brain has been sucked off into AR/AP mazes. I’m a therapist not a bookkeeper! Yet the coworkers keep plotting to find ways to convince me to stay past December.

Sigh.

Still ficcing, though it’s slow.

This semester I am enrolled in an online class about research. As in, let’s understand how to do it right. So I have a couple of textbooks I keep reading, that I re-read and re-read because the stuff won’t stick. And I remembered abruptly that this was the last week of September, and I should have a research question by the 30th.

So this morning I went to Other University Library, as My University Library is in a shambles, with a paucity of study space and more than half the books in storage, including bound periodicals. And I never get anywhere with their databases - clicking on a link may take you to a) a full text article b) a link page where it can be found via multiple databases or c) “we may have this - click here to search the catalog” which inevitably results in a dead end. Other University hasn’t got a lot of books, but they do have incredible database access, with handy links to all kinds of full text articles that can be emailed off to wait in my inbox until I get home. It takes less time, reaps far more options so far as resources go, and in an hour and a half this morning (as compared to hours of fruitless searching on Useless U Library’s website) I had collected twice the number of articles I needed for my paper. Which led to my formulating the actual research question, which I had no intention of doing until I knew how much research already existed on the subject. I’ve already done that dance of not having enough resources to finish the paper - not going to happen again.

I keep trying to read the assigned chapters for class, but gah, my brain, she takes it in and spits it out again, leaving me without a real idea of what it was about. It probably doesn’t help that the title of the book is “Qualitative Research Methods.” There’s only so much meta about research that the gray matter can take in a sitting.

My attention span is so fragmented, I’m alternating between three different books and writing three different fics, with breaks for surfing and sighing over blogs. I’ve been upset and cranky about/to some of the folk I brush up against in the course of a week, for their short-sighted, sometimes racist, sometimes ignorant statements, but in the end everyone’s doing what they can to cope. Knowing that this will create unknown but likely drastic changes in the economy, that people are dying and suffering, that fingers will point and insults thrown — I just want to hide under the futon. Or go help, but I know that driving or flying down there would be pointless, and wreck up my own situation, which is already tenuous given my near-starving-student status.

Of course, I’ve been suffering with the futility for a while, since long before the hurricane. I work for the county. I work with people who are disabled, physically or mentally or both, and it’s easy to bog yourself down and take on the hopelessness. I went into the field placement telling myself I needed to keep the optimism and my faith in the tenacity and unpredictability of human nature - that people can change, and even though change is really hard for someone who’s been depressed since they were raped as a six year old, there is hope.

I’m doing what I can for the hurricane — my yoga studio is donating all proceeds from Saturday classes for the next month, so I’ll be doing that. I’m going to start putting up more stuff on ebay and donating that money, whatever there is of it. I’ll put some books up for sale at amazon. While that isn’t a reason to feel smug it’s still something.

I just got the first of the textbooks.

OMG, that was the worst spent sixty bucks evah!

The basic aim of science is theory. Perhaps less cryptically, the basic aim of science is to explain natural phenomena. Such explanations are called “theories.” Insead of trying to explain each and every separate behavior of children, the scientific psychologist seeks general explanations that encompass and link together many differing behaviors.

Probability is an obvious and simple subject; it is a baffling and complex subject. It is a subject we know a great deal about; it is a subject we know nothing about. Kindergartners and philosophers can study probability. It is dull; it is interesting. Such contradictions are the stuff of probability.

Let’s calculate the probability this book will stay on my shelf two days after the final. There’s nothing baffling or complex about that.

Well, I’m set for the semester. Books are ordered (though $100 in books for a single class just hurts) and the syllabus has already appeared on the class web forum. It’s an online class, which is good, because judging from the syllabus it’s allllll about the research. Spending three hours a week listening to someone lecture about research then doing lots of reading and research? Not so much fun.

The class looks well organized, as compared to the other online class I had for this program. The other class was all about the micromanagement and the little “busy” work assignments that drove us all nuts. This class has nice stretchy deadlines and three main assignments. At the end of each month we are supposed to have participated in online discussion and at least two virtual classrooms, of which there are four per month.

Work (the job-for-pay) is burning me out faster and faster. The problem is, my rate of burnout is directly proportional to how much they depend on me. Today I shipped ten orders, answered the phone, and tried to balance the books. All in four hours, before going to the clinic to be mildly chastised/reminded that while I’m doing a great job with the clients, I need to do my case notes differently. It’s tough — research backs us up in saying that it’s the relationship that heals most effectively, but managed care wants specific milestones and concrete proof that we’re managing the client toward wellness. It’s such a subjective field in the first place that this is not difficult. It’s just that I’ve been making them as if they were for my benefit, not the insurance.

And, in other news, we’re in about the middle of season 5 of Oz. I loved Variety — the actors in the series are so talented! The ones you would expect to have tin ears sing beautifully.

Thank you for sending this little booklet called “Chart Your Course to a Master’s Degree.”

It’s just full of helpful tidbits of information that would have been useful three years ago when I was actually doing the charting. It might have saved me a few hikes around the campus, in fact. It certainly would have kept me from annoying well-meaning faculty I probably bugged too many times. However, now that I am advanced to candidacy and my course is not going to change (unless of course you cancel more classes and force me to), this booklet was a total waste of postage and glossy cardstock.

Once I have my diploma in hand you can bet I will be forever quit of you, never to look back. Ever.

Sincerely,
One of the grad students you hold captive while extorting higher and higher fees and canceling classes

P.S. Stop sending me stuff about orientations. Send it to the newbies.

School in two weeks! School in two weeks!

runs around flailing arms like Kermit

But, you know, still working, still doing that fieldwork thing.

My client no-showed today. Nice. At least she called to reschedule. I got in to find notes from my supervisor — two more clients to schedule. I’m getting closer to that magic 10 clients all the time. Of course, people who’ve suffered lifelong depression are often prone to no-show-ing and/or dropping out entirely, so it’s no guarantee I’ll find enough hours once I get that magic 10 clients….

Work is… work. We processed 20 orders today. The UPS guy took one look at the mountain of boxes and said he’d come back later. Poor shipper guys — walking around in 110F heat all day, and then we ship 200 lbs of Stuff in one go. Boss was snippy until he sold bunches of stuff, and other boss is moving on Friday under iffy circumstances; both he and his wife have very different but equally disabling conditions, so they have to have other people carry things around. So the mood has been… not good.

I’m getting tendonitis from spending two 8 hour days in a row working at their bookkeeping program, but I’ve got stuff entered through April. The rest of the week should be less strenuous…

I made a big mistake sitting with some classmates and our adviser the other day. (I just typed ‘adviser’ and ‘advisor’ and they both look wrong this morning. Don’t care.)

The Big A commented on Classmate A’s clinical assessment of a vignette, specifically her reference to ‘psychotropic’ medication. The vignette is about a kid with anger issues, not a psychotic, so her medication suggestion is off base unless the kid starts complaining about the voices or something. And there is no pill for anger or violent impulses, Big A sez, however much we wish there was.

I muttered, “too bad, we could pump it into the White House water supply.” To which Classmate A said, “Only for the previous administration.”

Of course it’s improper to run screaming in the middle of one of these meetings, so I sat quietly and focused on clinical terminology, but I really wanted to check on her reality testing ability. I don’t understand it — how do people develop these worldviews that fly in the face of reality? “Um, were we in a WAR last administration? Yeah, mucking around with an intern was wrong, but y’know, I can think of violent things the current administration has set into motion that, like, actually KILL people that are happening RIGHT NOW…. ”

And of course, all the pat answers die-hard conservatives memorize would pop out of her, and I would be making comparisons between her inability to observe and discern reality in the world at large with her inability to answer the questions about the vignette, but that would be just mean. Because you can’t shake the die-hards — she hasn’t been shaken from her stances on therapy in all the years I’ve progressed through the program with her, she won’t be shaken now by lil’ ol’ me, who believes in letting clients run their own lives and believe whatever about politics and religion. At the heart of it is the conviction that she’s right about these things, no matter what anyone else says.

It’s very selfish of me that when she mentioned needing another placement, I didn’t refer her to a few places I’m hoping to get hours, but I don’t want to work with someone like that on an ongoing basis. I know that eventually there would be Words, and it would be manifestly Unpleasant. Because it’s not just about politics. It’s the underlying stance that I believe would be bad for clients. Absolutism can hurt people. It’s hurt me. People who think their answers are everyone’s answers and should be rammed down throats without regard for free will make me crazy.

Probably the only time I’ve used the word ‘woe’ in all seriousness.

The good news is, I have not been fired, not gone totally broke, not gone hungry, etc.

The bad news is, I will be going so much deeper into debt and going completely starkers. The college is still giving me the bend-over-and-take-it treatment, though this time it’s more a case of someone not fully explaining what the frell certain things meant — I likely will not only have to pull down loads of loans over the next two semesters because I will not graduate in December, not graduating in December automatically negates my ability to consolidate loans at the current low rate, thereby adding loads of interest to them. Tuition is likely rising again in spring and I’ll soon be unable to find a paying job that will continue to warp itself around insane fieldwork hours.

I could only avert this by suddenly increasing my client hours from five a week to about sixty a week, because I only have… counts on toes …five weeks left in summer term. Since the clinic is only open eight hours a day, this is quite unworkable. Most clinics are only open eight hours a day, so a second placement is unlikely to help much.

I HATE when inadequate information bites me this way! And it’s not like it’s information that’s accessible anywhere — the faculty did backflips trying to work out this first-time exception to the normal order of things that’s allowing me to even do any hours at all right now. I couldn’t just open a handbook or a website cause it’s just not there. So the only source of information, the mouth of the program director, failed to provide me with adequate details regarding the conditions by which I would still get out of school in December.

I could have kicked him — except the one way to make this situation worse would be damaging the guy in control of it all, wouldn’t it?

Now that I’ve seen my first client at the new field placement, I have to wonder about my own sanity. I keep telling myself that I will find other work that has nothing to do with medi-cal. I have two weeks to figure out how to go about summarizing my experience for my advisor at school. By then, I will have additional experience to add to the description. People tell me I’ll learn a lot. Yes. Just not what they’re telling me I’m learning.

In other news, no one listens to me. Though why this should surprise me, I’m not certain. I’m having this issue where even though I write things down clearly on paper and hand them to people, somehow they don’t show up at agreed-upon times in agreed-upon places. It’s happened with a client, it’s happened at the job. This sucks.

None of the torrents I want appear to exist. I wanted Dr. Who, but I’m getting Battlestar Galactica. Should take all night but it looks like the whole season is coming down. Love the estimate - 43 days. (that’s dropping rapidly as the download gets going)

Had a hideous headache. Still have most of it, though several well-spaced doses of meds have taken the edge off. I have the feeling the weather’s about to turn abruptly 100+, since every time the weather changes my sinuses act up and I get this headache.

The library came through with Life of Pi and Time Traveler’s Wife — at least something/someone is cooperating at the moment. Between that and more episodes of Deadwood, plus BG if the download works out, I should be spending some quality time in other worlds this weekend. And swimming. It’s the Fourth on Monday — fireworks should be visible from our backyard, and I have enough tequila left for margaritas.

Fixed the financial aid crisis by filing the requisite piece of paper. To my suggestion of having the software be smart about this sort of thing: “It won’t do that. Our OLD software would do anything we wanted, but the chancellor wanted all the CSU’s on the same system, so we switched, and (sigh)….” And then I watched the nice lady go through a binder several times to look up what she needed to know to fix my problem. Two strikes for the chancellor’s office. Heck, pick one of the geeks over in the IT department and make it his senior project to fix all this fidgety crap that’s not working!

But, problem solved, after hiking across campus in the 95 degree weather. V. sweaty and cranky now. Will think about student loan consolidation later… which, if you are in the US and have not-consolidated student loans, even if you are still in school? You need to consolidate before July 1 to lock in the current low interest rate. Rates are going to soar. I’m pulling out of deferred status early to consolidate, then going back in. Hopefully I’ll be able to roll fall’s loans in with them.

If this university ever calls me to ask for alumni donations, I’m going to hang up on them.

I have apparently exceeded the approved allotment of units for a graduate program, so far as financial aid is concerned. I’m supposed to go file for an extension.

WHY? I am in a university program that all and sundry can tell is 60 units long. WHY doesn’t the fancy schmancy university software reflect that yes, my program, in which I am enrolled and advanced to candidacy and blahblahgoing to graduate-cakes, is 60 friggin’ units and not 47, which is the point at which financial aid yanks up the tent and goes home? WHY should I have to fill out paperwork that no one told me I needed to fill out to continue getting financial aid? If I hadn’t had this icky feeling that I get every semester that something’s going wrong and called out of the blue just to check, I would never have known — until it was too late to do anything but drop out. And hey, the gal acted all SURPRISED that I was worried! Uh huh. I hear the stories. I’m not the only one.

The chancellor’s office screwed up my schedule and made it impossible for me to graduate in December as planned and still work for money in Fall semester. The financial aid office wants to cut me off. I get the feeling they don’t want anyone to know how to get through any program without idiotic SNAFU’s like this, because this is the sort of thing that makes a three year program into a five year program — you miss one of their lame deadlines for papers you didn’t know existed, and you stay in school another year by missing a class or three since you couldn’t afford it. More money for them, more headache for you.

I have little to no sympathy for the university system here anymore. All their boo-hooing just irritates me now, because they seem to suddenly turn deaf whenever students have problems that could potentially screw up their lives. “Oh, well, that’s your problem.” Yeah, it is. You’ll hear about it the first time you hit me up for a hundred bucks, asshats. I’m keeping my money as my fees for babysitting your idiot bureaucracy until I got out of school with my sanity intact.

Yesterday, Temporary Office Boss expressed a desire to hire me outright so he could pay me more than the measly bits the agency gives me. While that has a certain appeal, I told him it’s not worth it to him — he’d have to hand the agency a couple thou for their matchmaking trouble to buy me. And I’m only there til some undefined day in Fall semester (pssst…. probably the day I get my student loan check) and so that would be as unwise an investment as Drunken Salesman was.

What I didn’t tell him was that I like having the agency as a buffer zone. We all have to sign contracts that limit my (and the agency’s) responsibilities. I can’t have a key or alarm code. I can’t run errands (no air conditioning in car + central valley summer = not enthused about errands). Plus, if I do manage to futz something up, or if the Dell I’ve been using blows up all on its own and they blame me, eh, I’m reasonably assured the agency will have other stuff for me to do.

This fall I will make no money but I will be working full time in my chosen field. Graduation is assured at some point; I have completed my comp exam, I have all the units scheduled for fall that I need to finish - it’s just a matter of getting hours, and I can put in a form if I don’t get them by mid-December. I’m also crazy in that I intend to take Yet Another Exam in October, for which I will have to drive to SF or LA and then pay $250, but it’s the selfsame exam used in like 35+ other states in the union as their licensing exam, and if I do it before graduation I will be able to credit all the hours I do here toward licensure elsewhere and not repeat them. Plus, LPC licensure is on the horizon here in sunny Cal, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have that extra acronym on the business card. It’s a twofer deal with the program I’m in — there are three, maybe four, CACREP accredited counseling programs in the state; because I am in one of them, I can add in this extra set of initials with no effort and minimal expense. So I will.

I don’t know if you wonder what all these letters stand for, or if I’ve explained any of this, so here’s the scoop. I’m studying to be a marriage and family therapist (MFT). California has no LPC (licensed professional counselor) licensure so MFTs by default become generalists, where in other states, MFTs work exclusively with families — it’s a matter of scope of practice as defined by state law. LPCs work with individuals, MFTs work with families and couples. We are the bottom rung of the clinical side of mental health; we can do therapy, like psychologists or psychiatrists, but we don’t make as much money. So MFTs see all the clients who work on their relationships, psychiatrists get all the ones who need medication, psychologists do individual, group, family or couple therapy depending on specialty and preference and whatever the client needs — there’s overlap too, as anyone who wants to be in school that much can get degrees in psychology and MFT, and as there’s no specific undergrad for it a lot of psychology majors end up in MFT. Many of my instructors have a psychology degree of some sort as well as MFT.

So, to sum up, I’m getting a 60 unit MS in MFT (there are less stringent 48 unit programs but those aren’t CACREP certified). I’m taking another licensing exam (the NCE) which is not nearly so clinically oriented as the MFT licensing exam, but it will give me an extra certification, which isn’t a bad thing. And as I do the 3000 hours of internship after graduation, I’ll be thinking about where I want to live, because it will then be possible to have a goal of living in Montana in ten years.

In the meantime, I’ll be working hard without pay, but a few months of that seems a paltry price for freedom and a better living wage doing something I’ve wanted to do, instead of peeling labels out of a laserjet for some guy who reads the WSJ while I write letters for him.

I’m no longer dominating the real estate on our dining room table. Since I no longer have textbooks to read or homework to do, the untidy stacks arranged by priority have vanished. Only to be replaced by Roommate’s untidy stacks of papers, bills, receipts and random junk mail. Where did he put it before I cleared the table?

It’s summer, but not quite. It’s not baking hot when we wake in the morning; cool breezes still drift through open windows. We slept with all the windows open last night (yay, quiet neighborhood).

Somehow, I have ended up 30+ pages deep in a WIP that is none of the WIPs I was working on just a few weeks ago. This is how I once turned out twenty stories in one year - the slow aggregation of long WIPs, and smaller stories around the edges. It’s just happening slower.

Knitting is slower than slow. Still working on the most elementary part of it. I can’t believe I’ve gotten this uncoordinated. I’ve been considering switching back to crocheting, but there are so many things you can do with knitting….

I think all this has to do with the absence of classes, however temporary, and the fact that I work only 20 hours a week. Slowly, the unwinding from the constant hustle progresses. If not for the financial duress it puts me under, I’d stick with that schedule….

No homework, so I’m feeling curiously light-headed.

Field placement hanging by a thread, which if it goes away entirely, will leave me with lots of time to a. find another job or b. lay around the house all summer writing, knitting and getting to know Geraldo and Oprah. Laying around the house (lying? laying? I used to know that, probably still do, don’t care) has a certain appeal, given all the stuff I meant to do in summer will now be done in fall semester along with the stuff I meant to do then.

I woke up tired this morning. I’ve been in this zone all week where stuff just doesn’t connect in the brain and I end up doing really stupid things. Once set in motion, I’m okay, but the brain cells I use to provide motivation seem to be lying there gasping for air after all the finals week grrrness. Work has been difficult because of this.

Maybe now I can go back to reading Strange & Norrell, which I never did get through.

I have a postcard from a friend who’s gone to Paris. Arg. Rub it in, why doesn’t she? ***longs for European vacation***

He wanted us to work on it in drafts. Really think about it.

Heh. He’s going to be lucky he’ll get a complete essay from me. I’m half done and balking.

Can you smell the smoke from my burnout from there?

Talked to fieldwork supervisor today - sigh. I was looking forward to having it within bicycling distance, but he needs me at the other, faraway location. At least it’s not the farfarfaraway location that would require two hours of driving each way, just the 20 minutes on a freeway faraway location.

I want to be done! kicks final bleh.

Tuesday, I discover the fieldwork class session is in the summer schedule.

Last night, I discover that only 21 students in my counseling specialty will be in them. We’re sharing with the other counseling types since they won’t allow those fields to have their own fieldwork class.

Priority will be given to those who would have finished in summer, then to those who would have finished in fall, and oy, I do not know how many of those exist. So I may or may not have been saved. I may or may not be able to finish. I have to tell various people what I am doing in the summer to determine work schedule and hours at county mental health, and I can’t.

WHY are they picking on the counseling program? Social work is still going strong, as are the teachers and the business students.

I want to kick someone.

The word has been handed down from on high. The only summer course available to me is the fieldwork. Which is really the only one that matters, as it’s the one that would keep me from graduating in December as scheduled.

I will now collapse in a quite boneless heap upon the floor in relief.

Then I will rise and again attempt to untangle the mess of yarn I was trying to knit with, so that I may have another go at casting on. I found a helpful guide to learning to knit online that looks better than what I was working with before.

I only wish I were at the beach.

Do you know the difference between i.e. and e.g.?

I sold something on ebay for a nice sum. Yesterday, I got to thinking about it — I’ll have evenings and weekends back again real soon! I’ll be able to write more. Which then got me thinking about all the other things I used to do that I gave up, like needlework, and that got me remembering things I wanted to learn to do, so… I found some knitting needles on ebay, and some nice non-acrylic yarn (I had to jettison two Hefty bags of cheap acrylic yarn because it makes my hands itch, in a way not unlike crocheting with nettles), and I already have a comprehensive how-to encyclopedia of needlework, so for next to nothing I’m taking up knitting, which will hopefully result in some lopsided scarves for Christmas presents. Because, gah, I’m going to have negative balances in my checking and savings come December.

I PASSED MY COMPREHENSIVE EXAM! Still working that one for as long as possible. I’ve had several classes full of counseling students cheering and clapping at that announcement. Some of them failed their exam, alas. So we celebrated and commiserated. I think this drifting sensation I’ve had lately has to do with how many of these folks are departing in May, and how I’ll be on campus once a week until December, excepting July, and that will feel like I’ve actually gotten out of college — I won’t be joining classmates for another round of papers and chapter readings and so forth. I’m contemplating a monthly meet-the-gang outing just to stay in contact with some of them.

Still waiting to hear about the proofreading/editing gig. I think I would enjoy doing that. I haven’t received any beta reading requests in a year or so, and I haven’t been in any writing groups — I’m probably losing my editing edge. I have a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style sitting in my cart at Amazon and intend to dig out my box o’ reference books (Strunk & White is in there somewhere!) if I get the nod for that job.

Staying busy, yeah. But not so buried in homework. One assignment left. One final. And the presentation on Monday, which won’t be terrifically difficult. It feels a whole lot more like spring. I’ve started working on a WIP already.

Roommate, before he went out the door, asked about Hitchhiker’s and if I wanted to go - that may be this afternoon. I thought that, and a margarita after, would be a great way to celebrate the exam, the semester coming to a close, and feeling less depressed in general.

I came home to find that my old cell phone sold on ebay, which means grocery money! Packaged that box and got it ready to go, then went out to see if the postal carrier had come yet or if I could stalk him and save myself a trip to the post office. He already came, but I’ve forgiven him - the letter came!

I passed the comprehensive exam! I won’t have to retake it! Woohoo! If I could backflip, I’d be entertaining the neighbors! I have no idea what score I really got - I’d have to ask. But I don’t think I will - pass/fail, baby!

DumbCat is celebrating by chasing her own tail all over the apartment.

Wash car, without drying or waxing, as the clearcoat has eroded and the paint is already gone to hell: check.

Feed stupid cat again: check. Poke her tummy to see if there’s a hole in it, or anything else that might explain ferocious cat-appetite: check.

Be jealous of the chick sitting out on her balcony reading what looks like a trashy paperback: check.

Research topic of presentation on internet, feeling like it’s too little too late: check.

Throw one of two feuding cats out the front door: check.

Go to group meeting to plot out presentation o’ heck: right now.

Tutoring gig - netted zero opportunity. I am apparently Too Stupid To Live, As Evidenced By My Merely Adequate Test Scores.

Applied for another that involves proofreading and editing. That, I can do handily, even if you’re writing MLA or some other esoteric format. I can be wicket smaht about deciphering style and formatting rules.

Still tired.

Had the last broken filling redone - bliss, bliss, bliss. My mouth has ceased its endless throbbing. Much chewing of gum hath ensued.

Attended a yoga class with a friend. Good thing it was only a relaxation/restorative class, or I would have been dead on the mat. Need to start doing yoga again toot sweet.

Knee hurts.

Homework. Grr.

Library still noisy - allergies suck, eh? But iTunes shows there are Mac users sharing music! heh. Viva la tunes.

I’ve done roughly half of my 3,385,348,332 papers. I have a major project to start/finish this weekend that will involve going to Kinko’s, two one-page papers to finish by tomorrow, and the group project. Part of my problem is the group project - I can’t beat the others with a banana until they contribute.

Believe me, I’ve tried. They keep running away.

Anyhow. The final for Monday night class will be another group project, and it’s likely that my presentation (individual style) won’t happen - the instructor has lost all semblance of organization. It reminds me of a high school history class I had where you could avoid lots of homework by getting the teacher on the subject of the Dodgers. Oy.

Just a few weeks left! Just a few weeks left! And then, fieldwork, which will be just like having a job - no homework! Well, unless there’s some new client that needs help with an eating disorder or something, which will require extra reading, but that’s different. There will be no pointless projects or hella-big papers to eat up my weekends until July, then in fall there will be one or two.

I’m trying to cheer myself up, if you couldn’t tell. I hate being this tired.

Woke up this morning, got myself a gun…

Well, no. But watching a Sopranos episode has a certain appeal. However, I have enough self preservation that only one HBO series may exist in my netflix queue at a time, and Oz season five is currently residing there.

And now, my current grr! Last night, in my multicultural counseling class, there were presentations. Everyone picked an article, grouped up and are presenting the contents of the article in class. My group picked one that seems interesting and informative and sufficiently multicultural. We’re supposed to present next week but it’ll likely be the week after. I think we’re the only group that will have anything to do with actual counseling, as so far, the presenters have gone ON and ON about schools, students, and poverty.

Yes, these are absolutely bigtime serious issues With Which We Must Contend, and yes, they do impact counseling. But some of these folks went so far off topic I started to wonder. Midway through one presentation I wanted to ask, hey — why are we talking about how eeeeeevilllllll television is? Because the article mentioned it in a single aside, then went on to talk more about minority kids who are taken out of school to provide free babysitting for their siblings while the parent(s) go to work, so the family can have food. And we were stuck on television for five minutes of a twenty-minute presentation - that’s a lot of time to spend off topic.

Did you know television is teh devil? Did you know that Certain Classmate has watched tv maybe twice in the past couple years, and only the news? And video games - ugh, never! That pronouncement was delivered with tight-lipped self-righteous energy that left a lot of us sitting there going “huh” and likely counting all the ways that bugged us. Well, it bugged ME. I was in awe of all the exclamation points devoted to scapegoating television and icky video games as contributing to mental deficiencies in kids, when malnutrition and a complete lack of investment on the part of parents in their kids’ education likely top the list for real reasons why. Television, in regulated quantities, is not in and of itself a dangerous thing. Sorry, group presenters. I personally see excessive television/video game exposure as a symptom of a larger problem, as in, letting kids have unlimited access to tv and video games is a visible sign of the lack of boundaries and rules in a given family, or of parents who are strapped for cash and gone all the time on one of their three jobs trying to pay the rent - you know, actual problem problems.

Television is yet another scapegoat in a long series of scapegoats. We’re too permissive, too punitive, too this, too that, that’s why our kids are screwed up, and every few years a new round of tactics surfaces — change the parenting style (buy my tape!), change the behavior (buy our book!), change the attitude (buy our tape and our book!), buy this blue snuggly or your kid will be autistic/schizophrenic/stunted. Yeah, whatever. Is it just me thinking that marketing drives everything these days? points at diet fads

Why not advocate getting help where you need help, and just do the best you can? Recognizing we aren’t perfect and making the best of things is possible, and much less anxiety-provoking than buying every parenting book on the market and paying attention to the unsolicited and sometimes mean-spirited advice of strangers. Parenting is not a science no matter what anyone says. Do consider diet, rule-setting, and disciplinary strategies thoroughly, but don’t kill yourself because you let Junior watch Blue’s Clues for four hours when you had the flu. It’s just not that big a deal. Moderation in a culture of excess is tough - it doesn’t help that we tend to shoot off 180 degrees when we find a problem. Excess in anything - tv, alcohol, gambling, prescription meds, vitamins, water, food, oxygen - can have disastrous consequences.

I wonder if the class jumped on tv because it would appear to be a solvable problem. “Turn it off” is easy to say to parents. But it’s a false fix. The real fix? Education. But how do you educate those who are in survival mode and don’t care? You can’t blame them for being focused entirely on where they’ll stay or what they’ll eat for lunch, when there’s no guarantee that either will be forthcoming. That’s what the group presenters should have talked about. What possibilities are there for these folks? The television babysitting their kids is the least of their problems, they’ll tell you. So what will you say when they come to your door, exhausted from the two full-time jobs and the stress of trying to get child support out of the deadbeat parent, having ridden the bus across town in the middle of summer to see you? “Stop letting the kids watch television.” How completely beside the point can we get?

It’s depressing to be moving into a field where you’re helping people who desparately need it, with limited resources. It’s not something one person, or even a governmental agency, can really fix. That will take a societal shift. Some in these parts are saying that Proposition 63 (which passed) is a start, a step in the right direction. It’s part of why I went to the county for fieldwork, and if possible will stay on as an intern. Changes are in the air. And I can be optimistic with a healthy dose of skepticism, because I know too well — mental health workers can only make progress when the client values whatever input the mental health profession may have for them. What value does therapy have for someone who has been existing on what can be dredged out of trash bins? They may need the help, but without the other solutions they need — food, housing, job — it’s hard to make any real progress. And the majority of the homeless and impoverished in my area are minorities, from cultures that don’t acknowledge therapy as useful.

Which is why I’m in a multicultural class in the first place. Learning how to understand and respect cultural tradition and belief that is different than my own, and learning to work with instead of against it. It’s just not helping that the class has fallen into the usual pattern of pointing and yelling at the symptoms instead of the real problem, which is a societal issue more than it is the fault of the media. While the media doesn’t help, it does grow out of a larger culture where people are objectified, stereotyped and treated unfairly because of skin color and classism. Television is a symptom in more ways than one. Turn it on and you can see a lot of heads nodding and backs are being patted that we’ve “grown out of” racism and prejudice, but it’s still there — it’s just harder to spot than it used to be. We may be using the same drinking fountains, but there’s still a schism in our heads. Even as I was interviewing for field placement I picked up on some of it — the attitude that because the black population drops out of counseling and doesn’t value it, we can’t help them. What came first, the attitude or the dropout? Sounds like a vicious cycle to me.

Which brings me back to Oz. It’s a hard series to watch, because it doesn’t step away from the race issue, or any other issue. But I appreciate honesty over the fake smiles and glossing over, and I appreciate the real character-making that goes into a well-written series like this, and while there’s a lot of people who condemn this sort of television for blatant violence and sexuality — it’s humanity. Do we want to accept it and deal, or pretend we can change it by ignoring it?

The series has a theme — the futility of our penal system. The attempt to rehabilitate prisoners by creating Emerald City was a good try, but every season we see more failures to make real change in these men, and more frustration and anger and burnout in the staff. Sister Pete (the therapist on the show) shows us every time how tough it is to stand up to the inmates and advocate for change. The inmates are trapped in prison with other inmates, all of them violent; how do we expect them to somehow become good citizens when we force them to socialize with other criminals exclusively? If while in prison they change the way we want them to, they become prey for the other inmates. Good people who make mistakes, like Beecher (who didn’t intend to hit the girl on the bike, but drove while exhausted - it could happen to any of us, couldn’t it?), end up becoming hardened and violent, or dead, as one hapless fellow who’d been in Oz for four days before someone killed him.

And a similar problem - how do we help the poverty-stricken people join society, if the issues include not just the money but the mindset? Released prisoners of the penal system and released prisoners of poverty have been living in different societies, where all residents are impoverished in one way or another. It’s an adjustment that carries with it a stress all its own.

We don’t like to look at the reality of problems. It’s much easier to put on a pair of {insert political party/religious belief here}-colored glasses, or just look the other way. Which is the biggest barrier to changing yourself, by the way. We want to think we’re okay just the way we are, and sometimes that becomes part of the problem. Sometimes we’re less okay, sometimes more so, but no one is completely okay, as in, perfect. What I want to do? Accept myself, warts and all, and do the best I can with what I have. That’s being real. It’s simultaneously the hardest and the easiest thing to do.

And how sad is it that I’m learning more from a television series than I am in a class where the instructor allowed the whole class to burn the television in effigy? I can’t wait to get out of school. It’s been a loooooong semester.

I submitted an app to a tutoring service that preps people for SATs and GREs and the like. They asked about my GRE scores - I pulled them out. I scored in the 95th percentile on Verbal, and that was the section I didn’t bother studying for at all, zippo, zilch. The other two scores, Quantitative (Math) and Analytical, I studied like weeks, without stopping, banging my head on algebra books and strategizing, and managed to score in the 39th and 81st percentiles, respectively. It’s enough to make you testy. Just because it takes me a little longer to do math….

I remember the GRE well - by the time I got to it, it was computerized. It’s therefore slant-able. By focusing exclusively on the first 10-15 questions in the analytical section, answering very carefully, I know that the computer upped the ante and slung out more difficult questions than it would have if I’d missed one of the first few questions. I then noticed I had just a minute left, so I randomly clicked answer after answer through the rest of the questions, knowing that also if you leave questions unanswered you will lose points.

The scoring rubric is interesting. My score for verbal was 670 and for analytical 690. The scoring caps at 800 possible. As I recall, the counseling program wanted me to score over 320 in math; I managed 540. The 74th percentile sits at 700. In verbal and analytical a score of 700 puts you at the 97th and 83rd percentiles. If you’re not up on statistical crap (like I am?), in calculating these percentiles they’re taking all the scores from a certain time period and comparing them. Of a million or so examinees, the average scores on these tests are verbal - 470 quantitative - 576 analytical - 552.

What the handy leaflet that came in the mail with my scores does not explain is what it all means to the people who want you to take the test. So I’m above average in two areas and below average in math. What of it? I’m in the 95th percentile in verbal, and the 31st in math — math seems to be easier for other test takers than it is for me, and verbal is harder for them. Which boils down to “I like reading and I hate math.” But it doesn’t tell you that I did in fact get A’s in algebra and geometry and physics, that even though I opted not to even go there in college I can figure the stuff out. It also doesn’t tell you that were I to end up in a job that I loved in spite of the usage of maths, I would likely just do the math and in the doing, I would get better at it and perhaps hate it less. It doesn’t tell you that I’m not always good at the analytical, but that I figured out the strategy to swing the score.

So you have three numbers that sort of describe what I knew three years ago when I sat in front of a computer for four hours, with only one bathroom break and a sore mouse finger. What does that tell anyone?

Yet another day - I rise, make coffee, post, and disappear into RL yet again.

I am so far behind on the ‘net stuff it isn’t funny. Other than random poking around and an occasional glimpse of my friends list, none of my usual haunts have seen much of me lately.

Someday, I will find the time again to be involved in something other than headaches and homework. I may even see ASC again. Or maybe even a WIP - those things I think about and open once in a while but end up lurking in a folder again in no time….

I want a life! I’m so burnt out on school. This is the hard part, I tell these undergrad daughters and sons of people I meet - going back to school after years and years means sacrificing parts of your life to it, whether that’s the time you used to spend with your kids or the time you spent on hobbies. The later you wait to go back, the more trouble you will have. So if you have a BA or BS in something like social sciences, where any job you can qualify for with just the undergrad pays barely more than minimum wage and will burn you out faster than a match to paper, keep going. Keep the momentum. Don’t establish a life then bury it in homework. Otherwise you will be like me - waking up in the morning feeling overwhelmed and trying to grab what little peace that can be found in sunshine and spring breezes.

I wish that peace could be bottled and taken with me to work.

A friend lent me Dreamweaver. I opened up my website locally as a project and immediately went agh, why did no one tell me this code was so broken? I have so much superfluous code!

Needless to say I haven’t got any homework done. I can tell I’m starting to get depressed again when I’m able to completely ignore deadlines this way. I came to the library with everything because at home the temptation was too great to curl up and sleep; now I’m twiddling ’round with several things at once, none of them productive in any profitable way. And I still want to curl up and sleep. The laptop would make a nice warm pillow.

I got to class tonight after two weeks absence (spring break, then last week Thursday was Cesar Chavez Day — wtf is it with all these extra holidays? it’s like we’re pseudo-Catholic, christening dead people with holidays instead of sainthood) only to find that I should have written a paper about the chapters we were supposed to read for last week’s class that we didn’t go to.

So in the next two weeks I have to finish two papers, a group project, a final project, and the backlog of case notes plus current case notes plus two part time jobs plus probably more stuff I forgot plus more reading plus blahblahblah aaaagh just shoot me now so I don’t have to think about this list any longer.

Fieldwork is going to feel so freeing, at least for the first few weeks.

Things that I have not blogged due to the blackout (blogout?):

My roommate’s fish, of which no two are the same kind, have managed to have babies. The mama is orange, the apparent papa (deduced by his acceptance in the nest area) is a big brown-with-black-stripes. We’re hoping some of them survive long enough so we can see whether they look like tigers. There were a thousand or so; in the past week it’s dwindled to around ten.

The backlong created by my weeks of focus-on-the-comp-exam is killing me. I almost forgot the take home midterm that was due last Monday, forgot the reading assignments, and did not get a treatment plan or case notes done for today. I haven’t watched videos of sessions. Neither I have not started on any of the backlog due to a group project/presentation for which I had to race out at the last minute last night to meet with the others — and now I can add powerpoint slides and outlining an article to the workload. Of course, this means I spent three hours yesterday playing a computer game. Stress, meet coping mechanism.

It’s spring. The headaches have returned. Arg, sinuses.

I preordered the next Harry Potter and contemplated the “deluxe edition.” What makes it deluxe, a glossy photo of Daniel Radcliffe? Hermione’s autograph? Behind the scenes? Outtakes? I got the book, non-deluxe.

My teeth are still killing me.

I need a real job. I hate clerical. The closer it gets to graduation, the more I grind my teeth - see last bullet point.

I spent an hour on the phone with a panicking classmate, who had the unfortunate experience of one of her therapy group members bailing out of treatment, with the excuse “there was too much psychobabble.” It’s a therapy group, not a peer group — did she expect that there would be no therapist? Duh. Projection, much? I wish I could log the hour as phone consultation. Alas. But it felt good to help her nevertheless.