Self assessment

Looking back on who I was just a month ago, it is almost funny to realize how much I have changed and learned in such a short amount of time. In a way, I am a lot less uncertain about areas of my life now, but I also have a lot more questions that I am looking at answers for. When you spend time in a field that you would like to pursue you get asked sooner or later, when did you know this was the field for you or when did you realize this is what you wanted to work on. The stories range from in-depth and interesting tales to short, quick blurbs and a, yeah that's it stories. Mine in a  way falls in the middle, I knew that I wanted to work a job that helps people and I wanted to deal with them in a hands-on situation. Later in high school, I took a psychology class and realized that mental health was an interest of mine as well so I combined the two passions and got to the therapy side of behavioral health. From then on it was just class after class, taking what I could to learn the basics in my field up until the current day. As a rising junior at Washington & Jefferson College, I believed I was ahead of the game, on the ball, and a thousand other confidence euphemisms about the guaranteed position waiting for me on the other end of those four years of college.

Don't get me wrong, it is great to be confident about what you want to pursue, but it isn't so great to think you have everything figured out, especially when you haven't even turned twenty-one yet. By the end of my sophomore year, I was ready to take on my own challenge and blaze my way through those grad school applications. I was going to design my own project through the Magellan format my school provides. It was a great way to stay busy during the summer, make some contacts in the behavioral health field and possibly write something that could be published. What I didn't realize was that two days into my project I would be sitting at the cubical the office had provided for me typing about the past two days I had just had and becoming very, very aware that I was a goldfish fish who thought she was a shark. In a way, those humbling first days became some of the most influential days of the Magellan.  Before I thought I had everything figured out and I was ready to take on the behavioral health field with no help needed. Now I know I didn't have any questions because I couldn't have fathomed what I didn't know. So far in my collegiate career I had been taking basic psychology classes going over material just in the field of psychology. I had learned the history of psychology forefathers, disorders with their symptoms, treatments and outcomes, the specific areas of psychology, different methods, research methods and ethics and APA format. What I quickly learned was that I had not learned about the application of this knowledge or the steps I had to take to get to my dream job.

From the beginning of my project to now it is fascinating to review this past month and realize how many practical things I have learned about the work force that will be hopefully entering in a few years. I learned very quickly that a work day day routine, though similar to a collage class routine in its comforting regularity, is different in its own right. I always was a fan of routine ad expected events in my day, it is probably why I was such an avid calendar user. Working in Pine Center, I discovered the fun part of a little organized spontaneity, which in a doctor’s office really is not out of the ordinary. Chaos in a doctor’s office is normal actually, the tiny bit of busy crazy keeps places like the Children’s office running smoothly. It keeps the employees busy and the children happily entertained. After a month in this bustling office, I noticed that not only id I like the speed at which it moved but that I was also entertained and engaged through out my work day. I would come home with lots of stories to tell and brag about the awesome people I got to spend my day with. I never returned to my house an unhappy camper with how my Magellan was going. It also didn’t hurt that Pine center was located about only thirty minutes from my home. I took until half way through driving through the center of cranberry and Wexford that I was hit by a long line of traffic. At first I was frustrated because it meant I would be a little late coming in the offices, but then I laughed because I felt I had finally been initiated into working adult mode. This bubble soon wore off and I became more practical, looking up alternative routes to the office instead wasting extra time sitting in a long line of drivers all trying to squeeze into one lane. 

Looking back on who I was just a month ago, it is almost funny to realize how much I have changed and learned in such a short amount of time. In a way I am a lot less uncertain about areas of my life now, but I also have a lot more questions that I am looking at answers for. When you send time in a field that you would like to pursue you get asked sooner or later, when did you know this was the field for you or when did you realize this is what you wanted to work on. The stories range from in-depth and interesting tales to short, quick blurbs and a, yeah that's it stories. Mine in a way falls in the middle, I knew that I wanted to work a job that helps people and I wanted to deal with them in a hands on situation. Later in high school I took a psychology class and realized that mental health was an interest of mind as well so I combined the two passions and got to the therapy side of behavioral health. From then on it was just class after class, taking what I could to learn the basics in my field up until the current day. As a rising junior at Washington & Jefferson College I believed I was ahead of the game, on the ball, and a thousand other confidence euphemisms about the garneted position waiting for me on the other end of those four years of college.

Don't get me wrong, it is great to be confident about what you want to pursue, but it isn't so great to thing you have everything figured out, especially when you haven't even turned twenty-one yet. By the end of my sophomore year I was ready to take on my own challenge and blaze my way through those grad school applications. I was going to design my own project through the Magellan format my school provides. It was a great way to stay busy during the summer, make some contacts in the behavioral health field and possibly write something that could be published. What I didn't realize was that two days into my project I would be sitting at the cubical the office had provided for me typing about the past two days I had just had and becoming very, very aware that I was a goldfish fish who thought she was a shark. In a way, those humbling first days became some of the most influential days of the Magellan.  Before I thought I had everything figured out and I was ready to take on the behavioral health field with no help needed. Now I know I didn't have any questions because I couldn't have fathomed what I didn't know. So far in my collegiate career I had been taking basic psychology classes going over material just in the field of psychology. I had learned the history of psychology forefathers, disorders with their symptoms, treatments and outcomes, the specific areas of psychology, different methods, research methods and ethics and APA format. What I quickly learned was that I had not learned about was how to apply this knowledge or the steps I had to take in order to get to my dream job later on in life. It was daunting at first realizing this, but thankfully I was still in the Pine center offices with Dr. Schlesinger and was able to ask her to explain more steps of the process and options of the psychology field more thoroughly. 

When learning a new language people always say the best way to really master it is to immerse yourself in the language and just keep speaking it. For the rest of my Magellan I immersed myself in the language I spoke psychology as much as possible and I asked questions when I felt I had gotten something wrong. I still struggled with things I never thought I would have trouble with such as separating my emotions and the patient’s from the session. In the past I believed myself to be very emotionally mature, being able to see clearly through what most people overreact over. What I learned through my Magellan that emotional maturity in therapy was an entirely different type of maturity. One of the elements to being a a good therapist is being able to keep your emotions, as the therapist, separate from the emotions of the patient. At first I had an impossible time at this and I would go home and ruminate over the cases I got to sit in over and over in my head and get frustrated, then confused, then frustrated again, to final end in astonishment that the therapist I sat in with on the case didn’t seem to have any troubles at all what so ever and probably wasn’t even concerned over the case. To these trained therapists, it was just another case of depression or oppositional defiant disorder, but to me it was a child’s future of well-being sitting in my lap now with the potential to harm the child more than help the child.

With time I did become better and not letting some of the cases sit on my heart all night long. There is something to be said about the ability to leave work and work. Being the person who is supposed to be able the only thing that will help a parent’s child be “normal” can be very stressful and I learned that I wasn’t alone in struggling at first after sitting in on sessions. It was a normal reaction and with time and practice handling the emotional baggage of being a therapist would get easier with time. It is certainly not unheard of though for therapist that work with high risk cases, more extreme than anything I had the chance to see in the Children’s offices. To go and see a therapist themselves to talk about the emotional struggle that they have to deal with on a daily basis. Keeping this in mind, I was shadowing cases following children and for some people, seeing sick children is the most difficult emotional struggle and too much for them. This is perfectly acceptable because there are people of all ages who need therapeutic help. A thought that kept running through my mind during this month was, what if I was one of those people who can’t be the best for these sick children? It was a hard question to ask myself because I had always been so sure of everything I wanted to do with my life. Once again though, after a conversation with Dr. Schlesinger a little bit after my project had been completed I felt much better about that swirling though in my head. Dr. Schlesinger told me that when she started out on the psychology path she thought she wanted to work in geriatrics, but after working in that specific age cohort she realized that she kept seeing her grandparents in every patient. It became to much for her and she decided to try a different age. She soon found that pediatrics was the patients for her and she had been more than happy ever since making the switch. With this reassuring conversation in mind we ended the final meeting to officially wrap up my Magellan project with a promise to keep in touch and to send any feedback I thought their offices should hear. The men and women who I had the chance to work with at the offices were special people and I know I am better person for having worked with them the past month, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that should I ever need to take my child to a behavioral health services, I want it to be a place like the Children’s office in Wexford.