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I cannot believe I am really here.
I have completed my last paper, taken my last exam, taken the licensing exam, and am awaiting my diploma on the 15th. I have imagined this day in the distant horizon many times, but now it is really here. I don't quite know what to do with myself! I am so used to buzzing along with the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing in mind....
While it sounds trite, sitting in the School of Nursing Auditorium for orientation, scanning the crowd for gray hairs like mine, really doesn't seem like that long ago. I certainly have developed some new skills as I had hoped. I also think I have grown tremendously as a person. I see the world a little differently now. I have a different perspective on interpersonal relationships. If someone were to review the blogs I have written during these three years, I suspect she would find tangible proof of the personal changes I have experienced while pursuing this MSW in midlife. There have been challenges, certainly, particularly with respect to balancing my family and my constantly changing schedule. Commuting to Baltimore from DC was not always easy. But I would say it's all been worth it for me. And I think it has been a good experience on balance for my family. Wow, has it really been three years???
I'm not quite sure where I am headed from here. I would like to find a job that would enable me to earn my clinical license over the next few years. I'm also exploring ways to integrate my prior career as an attorney with my new skills as a social worker. I'm starting to interview but need, as always, to remain mindful of my family responsibilities first. The job may sound great and I'm willing to give it my all during the workday, but the reality is that I am not a free agent for at least another ten years. Finding the right opportunity might take a while. I may be spending a lot of time in the coming months at the neighborhood pool with the kids. The new challenge may learning to slow down and let the next chapter unfold.
Congratulations to all my fellow graduates and best of luck in reaching your career goals. Good luck to anyone who is reading this blog with all or part of the process of obtaining this degree before them still.
All the best,
Kathi
Unbelievably, this day has arrived. It seemed so far away in September. All in all, the time has gone by quickly. My evaluation has been completed and I'm just counting down those last few hours.
I've spent the last week or so tightening up my charts, saying good-bye to my clients one-by-one, and meeting with the other therapists in the office who will be taking over my cases. Going through this process has made me more aware of how much I have learned during the past year. Certainly, there is no end to the body of knowledge pertaining to the treatment of mental illness. But I feel I have taken substantial steps in creating a basic foundation of knowledge from which I can now move forward into more focused areas that are compatible with my clients' needs and my own interests. I think this is one of the most attractive aspects of clinical work for me - the ongoing learning that awaits me. So, as I pack up my desk and turn in my key today, I feel a sense of accomplishment as well as anticipation of what is to come.
I am ready to leave. I'm looking forward to having a little more time to organize my thoughts for my last exam on May 1st. I'm looking forward to being able to focus my attention upon job-hunting, rather than squeezing it in here and there. I have plans to attend a couple of seminars during the next month in possible areas of interest; I'm excited about these opportunities to venture into the profession more fully. And then I have this dream of having just one day, with the kids off to school, when I do absolutely nothing productive at all....
It's been a quieter couple of weeks since I last wrote, with Spring Break and all. I am slowing down, which makes me more aware of the extreme pace I had been maintaining. There have actually been a few moments in the last couple of weeks when I truly had nothing pressing. I was a little bit at a loss! The larger problem, of course, is that it's not really all over yet. I still have another month of classes and one more exam to complete, plus two more weeks of field. I am trying - somewhat in vain - to maintain my focus.
I am starting to say good-bye to some of my clients at my field placement. Some of them seem sad, while others are angry. I notice that, on the whole, this month my clients are keeping their appointments and some are even coming more frequently than they had before. Most of my days are now full, a goal that had remained elusive through much of the placement. I have 17 active clients, and 3 more whom I am covering temporarily for another therapist who is on maternity leave, but I still have had large gaps - sometimes whole days of nothing happening - due to no-shows and cancellations. I guess the time has gone quickly for the clients, even though they knew I was a student intern from the start.
Yesterday I attended the Job Fair at The School of Social Work. It was fun to run into a couple classmates whom I had not seen since Fall Semester, 2006 and others whom I have met along the way these last three years. I distributed some resumes and also had a chance to learn about some practice areas in which I have not had a field placement. I have no idea where I am going to work next year but I sure hope, economy and all, that there is a job somewhere!
Kathi
Yah! Almost there. I am ready.
Things have been moving along at break neck speed which, if you have been reading this blog, is pretty much the way that it is, most of the time. Snow days and sick kids have been adding an extra dash of unpredictability, stretching me a little too tightly at times. The past couple of weeks were particularly crazy as I geared up and took the LGSW Exam - and PASSED! WhooHoo! What a load off my mind!
I continue to really enjoy my class. I am so glad I picked Family Therapy. I'm learning a lot and am finding that, even though I work with individuals at my field placement, it helps to have a deeper awareness of the family piece. I am starting to talk a little bit about my departure with my clients at my placement. Some seem to have totally forgotton that I was temporary as a Student Intern, while others must have had this on their minds all along.
Well, better go study for that last midterm exam....
Kathi
Here we are in Week 6. I've been keeping up with my placement and my class, but the big story is really more on the family side. I'm feeling major tugs in that direction. Just in the last two weeks, the younger daughter had the stomach bug, both had science fair projects to complete, the girl scout cookies rolled in for delivery (each kid had 25 + customers in the neighborhood to track down), a decision needed to be made about middle school for the older daughter, the summer camp thing needed to be considered, and, sadly, one of the hamsters died.
If you've been following this blog for the past few years, you know that the kids got hamsters for Christmas a year ago. Well, we seem to have hit "mid-life" with them - I mean, they do only live 2-3 years. First Brittany, aka mama hamster (she had a litter of 11 just about this time last year) had a bleeding problem in her "nether regions." Then a few weeks ago Freddy - yes, we confirmed he was male, not female as we had originally thought - had something wrong with his eye. Sometimes he was fine, then other times one eye was bulging and the other was closed. My husband had balked at the prospect of the vet (for a $10 hamster!!!!) when Brittany had her infection back around Thanksgiving, but he saw how she recovered - and had to grudgingly admit how cute she was taking her antibiotics from the syringe. Now, as he saw Freddy's eye, my husband said, "you better take him to the vet." The kids, of course, have been all over all this extra care and nurturing. BOTH want to hold them at the vet, BOTH want to administer the medication, BOTH want to reassure, etc, etc. etc. Anyway, Freddy made a couple of trips to the vet but apparently died from an eye infection. We dug a hole and buried him in the backyard last Friday when everyone got home. Ironically, it was the younger daughter - who professed not to like Freddy at all "because he's crabby" - who was bawling. However she did recover in time to watch "The Clique" with the rest of us after dinner....
So, against this backdrop, I find myself pondering the LGSW Exam. I think I might be mad. I really do feel like I am already stretched to the limit right now. For applicants out there, you can sit for the social work boards (the level you are eligible to take at the time of graduation from the MSW program) during your last semester. It's a 4 hour exam with a process of application and study separate from any coursework at the School of Social Work. In some ways it seems like one thing too many. In others, it seems silly not to roll the dice and see what happens while I am in the thick of things. Boy, I sure hate multiple choice, though.
On that note, I've got to run.
Kathi
And I'm already running a little bit behind myself. I really should have written this blog last week. Somehow the days just slipped past me.
I've finally decided which class I am taking this semester: family therapy. I was having a hard time deciding, I guess, in part, because this is the last class I will take in the program. I suppose my indecision reflects some ambivalence about graduating and dealing with uncertain job prospects. Perhaps appropriately, though, the needs of my own family were also a key factor. It turned out that I really needed a morning class on either Monday or Friday and the options were limited.
Having said that, and despite the fact that I have a hard time envisioning myself as a family therapist, I find I am really enjoying this class. Just for the record (since there are several people who teach this course at the School of Social Work), I have Rosenbaum. He's been a family therapist for 20+ years, so he brings lots of clinical experience and perspective to the course. I really like his style and approaches so far.
The placement continues. I'm finding my case load, for various reasons, has fallen off again, so my supervisor is starting to assign me some new cases. I won't have much time to work with these individuals, but it's good to stay busy.
That's about it. Stay warm!
Kathi
Yes, we're back again. Hopefully for the last time, for me.
I hope your holidays were good and the vacation was restful. Not a whole lot to report in that department from this end. Pretty uneventful. Santa brought the kids a Wii, which is quite a distraction in the house now that everyone is back to school. My third grader now wants to play on the Wii instead of watching TV when homework is done, and bemoans a lack of Wii time if there is too much homework. A potential addictive personality???
Once again, I have only one class on Friday and my advanced placement continues on Tues, Wed, Thurs. I'm not sure I've mentioned my hours at the clinic: I work 8:30-4:30 on Tuesday/Thursday and 10-8 on Wednesday. Yes, Wednesday is a long day. Technically we are not supposed to work more than 8 hours at a stretch. But I do, to build a "cushion." Just hitting the minimum hours worries me since the total number of hours are essential to receiving credit for the experience. I may be a little bit "over" in my hours by the end of the year, but that's ok. I was last year too. I'd rather have it that way, than find myself short.
My placement is rolling along. I feel more comfortable there now, with one semester behind me. I suppose there is a greater sense of confidence, a belief that I can really do this. A second Catholic University student has joined us and I am enjoying getting to know her, even though we only overlap on Wednesdays. There seems to be a big to-do about celebrating the Vietnamese New Year in the next week or so. Even though a number of the clinic's clients are Vietnamese, I have not really acquired much more knowledge about this culture because there is a Vietnamese therapist and a Vietnamese psychiatrist who serve these clients. I gather we are going to be sampling some of the cuisine. Since I am not that adventurous in a culinary sense, this will be new to me. Should be interesting.
More about my class next time, when I know more....
Kathi
When I got to class last Friday, I was so tired that I was shaky. The professor had handed out our take-home exam the week before and it needed to be completed by December 19. I really pushed myself last weekend and in the early part of the week to get it done for the 12th. It had seemed like we were not going to be having class on the 19th - which is indeed the case - and I wanted to save myself a drive to Baltimore from DC just to hand in a few pieces of paper.
But I think I may have pushed myself a little to hard in the process. Sitting in class I could really feel that I was 43 and that it was the end of the semester. I was so very done with this thing called being in school. I had hit the wall.
I can't remember when we get grades back for the fall semester, but right now I really don't care. I've done my best and learned a lot about CBT. So far I am passing in my placement and learning a lot there too. And that's all that really matters in the end.
I spent the weekend sleeping in a little bit and bustling about the house addressing the piles of things I couldn't focus on before, getting the tree up, the gifts wrapped, the cards written, the list checked, etc. I'm so glad I got the exam done early. Hopefully this week I will finish "Santa's chores" and still have a few moments, just for me, before the kids are home for Winter Break.
Happy Holidays to all. See you next year.
Kathi
It is hard to believe I have been going to my placement for three months now. The newness has worn off a bit at this point and I'd like to think I can feel my feet under me a little. "Like to think" may be the operative word. You may remember that I am working at a community mental health clinic in Wheaton. While I certainly knew previously that it takes years to really hone one's skills as a therapist, I can see first hand now why this is the case.
I wrote previously about the pace of the work. In the last month my caseload has picked up quite a bit, so I now have fewer slow days. This is definitely working better for me. I do find myself wishing I had learned Spanish last summer as I had originally planned when I accepted this placement. Somehow that just didn't happen. But my co-student from Catholic University, who is bilingual, is a better fit than I for the multicultural population the clinic serves - heavily Latino, with a fair number of African and Vietnamese clients. Most of my clients speak English fluently but the few with limited English skills have thus far chosen to tough it out and not use the translation service. Still, sometimes it is hard to understand the client, which is frustrating for both of us.
So, yes, I have had a chance to try therapy in this placement. Some of the clients have more of a capacity to engage in this process than others. Almost all the cases are complex, consisting of combinations of multiple Axis I diagnoses, Axis II diagnoses (ie. personality disorders) and medical or social issues. Many of the clients have had multiple stays in psychiatric hospitals. In this clinic you can see clearly the effects of the deinstitutionalization of mental health.
So far, the clients I struggle with the most are those diagnosed with schizophrenia who present with significant negative symptoms. I feel like I hear every tick-tock of the clock in these sessions. Most of the time otherwise, though, the hour seems to fly by. I'm rarely certain that I am doing "the right thing" with any one client, but I am learning a lot about myself and the therapeutic process, while doing the best I can. It's a good thing I have another twenty years to "perfect" my technique.
Some people say that the MSW program is a personal growth process as much, if not more, than an educational experience. I do think you start to see the world around you a little differently over the course of the semesters. For some people the shift may be subtle. For others, it may be more dramatic. The characteristics of others that once seemed maybe just a little odd or different certainly take on different meanings after studying the DSM in Psychopathology. Sometimes now there are labels that come to mind in daily interactions. It seems to me that can be both good and bad. I think sometimes the labels can save you a bit of personal grief and can help in approaching more difficult personalities/situations if you heed them.
I am also finding that I see groups differently now, having studied group dynamics some. My Friday morning class has been interesting in this regard. The first day the professor was very up front that the course was demanding, in terms of the volume of reading particularly. It has been interesting to note that we sit in distinct subgroups in this class. At first there were two groups, one at each end of the room, with a large group of empty seats in between. I myself sit in the back right corner with my friend from last year's placement. He chose our seat because he got there first on the first day and I went with it. I have felt very comfortable in my corner, sitting with my friend, with a cluster of classmates sitting in front of and around me.
The past few weeks, the two groups have broken down further into three. There is now a small group on the rightish-center of the room in addition to the right and left groups. Interesting. I've wondered: Do we sit like this in this particular course to manage our anxiety? How conscious or unconscious is this? Is this a common pattern of seating in this course, or is our class weird?
So all this may cause those of you out there who are possible applicants to wonder about the social climate at the School of Social Work. I really can only speak to what happens in and around the classroom because I am just not a part of the rest due to time and logistical constraints. My observations are also, of course, a product of my own experiences. (Read: Take them with a grain of salt.) I have made some friends at the School of Social Work. Some friends I only see in class and others I see "outside" for lunch, dinner, drinks, etc. I will say that the dyads and groups were pretty visible last year at Shady Grove. This makes sense if you think about it. Shady Grove is a group of 40-50 students. The full-time students are together for 12 hours of class a week. The sprinkling of part-time students like myself might shift the group dynamics slightly but unless you choose actively to be a loner, you are probably going to find yourself part of some dyad or group. In Baltimore there are more courses offered, at different times, on different days. There is more mixing, if you will. From what I have seen, this limits the development of groups. Pairs seem to be more common.
I used to think we left middle school behind when we left 8th grade. Now I see we are in middle school all over again, recast in different group names, all our lives -- and the middle school dynamics play themselves out, over and over again.
It's hard to believe it's November. Wow. The last couple of weeks have been crazy, but I don't have much to say that I haven't said before, I guess. For an "alternative-age" student such as myself, it's really about balancing all the little pieces. Recently it's been the first real tests for my third grader in science and social studies, the fifth grader's multiple projects (native american dwelling model, plant poster, book report diorama, etc.), my own midterm exam, Halloween, and future plans for middle school - tossed in with the day-to-day placement, classwork, elementary school homework and kid activities. This week, for some reason, it all seems to have slowed down. I have all this time on my hands. I find my mind drifting towards Christmas....
My class is moving along. I think we are finally reading more of the material most of us expected to focus on when we registered for the class: ie. cognitive behavioral therapy. The first half of the syllabus was all about Behavioral Therapy. Now, post-midterm, we finally hear about the role of cognitions. Sometimes I think this course should be called Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.
I continue to accumulate clients at my placement, but many of them do not stick around for long even though they really need the services. I'm definitely seeing chronic mental illness up front and personal. It's an education to see the DSM diagnoses manifest, in different ways, in different people.
Well, that's about it until next time -
I continue to plug along with my class. This coming week (Week 8, but who's counting) we have the midterm exam, postponed from last week. At this point, I just want to do it and be done with it. The "bad" news (per Dr. Pecukonis) is that the computer lab was not available for our rescheduled exam, so now we have to write them out by hand. Aw, shucks (see my last blog)....
I thought I would write a bit more about my placement this time. You may recall that I am working at a community mental health clinic. The clients all carry an Axis I diagnosis, most commonly schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety, or an eating disorder. The clinic has both psychiatrists and therapists on staff, most of whom speak at least two languages. The clients are predominantly Hispanic or Vietnamese. Because I am not bi- or multi-lingual, the clients with whom I personally am working speak English, with at least a basic degree of facility. I am certainly learning a lot about the Axis I diagnoses and expanding my cultural competence skills. And I'm still working on that learning curve that I wrote about previously in terms of the medications.
But another thing I am learning about in this placement is the pacing of the work. A couple of blogs ago I said the work at this placement did not seem that different from what I did last year at the correctional facility. I no longer feel this way; there is much more depth with each individual now that I have moved beyond the intial sessions with some of them. Also, when I interned at the correctional facility last year, it was go-go-go. Basically I moved about at my placement at much the same pace as I move through my days as a mom. The pace of the work at the clinic this year is quite different. I have more time to just "be" than I have had in at least 10 years. You would think I would leap at this opportunity to slow down a bit. However, I am finding that slowing down requires some adjustments from me. I am just so accustomed to running, running, running. My first blog of this semester is a prime example of what I am talking about.
This placement appeals much more to the introverted side of my personality. This is the piece of me that loved working as law clerk to an appellate judge. I literally spent my days in the library while working in that position. It was very solitary work. There's no library at the clinic, but I've been constructing my own, bringing in all sorts of reading material. I've had the luxury of reading through entire files, word by word. And once again, my days are pretty solitary. Unless I am working with a client, I am pretty much by myself. There is another student (from Catholic University School of Social Work) and we share an office, but we only overlap on Wednesdays. Most of the time I use the office across the hall on these days because we see clients at different times and somebody has to go somewhere else.
I'm not sure how I feel about all this yet. Some days I am ready to fall asleep after a couple of hours. I check my watch a thousand times and wait, with some resignation and impatience, for my appointed time to leave. I am very aware of meeting my hourly requirements for the field placement office. Other days, though, I am lost in my reading, pursuing various tangents at whim and enjoying the opportunity to do so, at least part of the time. I sense that I am gradually slowing down, just a little bit, all around. When I leave my internship of late, I am not quite as compelled to run in ten directions at the same time in the name of being a "good mother."
So far I remain on the fence about whether I have the ability to become a decent therapist. This is one of the main questions I wanted to answer through my advanced placement. I want to know what kind of job I should be looking for once I graduate (hopefully, anyway) in May. It seems the ability to cope with a slower pace is a more important part of the puzzle than I had previously imagined.
Week 6. Not that I am counting. Well, ok, yes I am. I think I have "senioritis." I am definitely moving through the weeks with one eye focused upon finishing this program in the Spring. It has been quite a ride, being back in school at this point in my life. I've learned a lot but it will be nice for my family to be able to settle into a predictable schedule. I think the upheavals every few months are starting to wear on everyone.
But I am jumping way ahead of myself.....
My class is coming along. We have a midterm exam in a week (or so) in the computer room. Yes, dinosaur-me will be typing a 3 hour exam. I imagine it is much easier for the professors, who then do not have to decipher handwriting. But I do still feel some trepidation. For me, it is a somewhat novel way to take an exam. Heaven forbid (KNOCK ON WOOD) a computer snaffoo in the final minutes of the exam! And yet, as we all know, that possibility does exist. If I had my druthers, I think I would still go with a handwritten exam with tangible work product, on paper, from the start. Yes, a conservative approach, but it's a long 3 hours.
There is a lot of small group work in my class. I think I wrote a prior blog about how much group work there is in social work school. A couple of years ago, it felt really weird to be in these groups. Now it feels pretty normal. Our group is doing ok in the sense that there doesn't seem to be any one person who is taking over, squelching the input of everyone else. But we could use a leader. I have seen this before in this program. Often the leader in a group emerges by default. Unlike law school, where my colleagues vied for the reins, I find that my social work peers for the most part (myself included!) are not as interested in being leaders. It's noteworthy because as social workers we consider ourselves to be agents of change. It would seem that change requires leadership.
At my placement, I am seeing the DSM Axis 1 diagnoses up close and personal. I have a bit of a learning curve on the psychotropic medications prescribed by the psychiatrists in the clinic. I am working on this, trying to understand how the medications each of my clients is taking play a role in the treatment plan. There is some case management, but also the opportunity to try psychotherapy. This is what I wanted. I need to figure out if the clinical piece, in the narrow sense, is for me. Stay tuned.
So, we are back in the full swing of things now. We are beginning Week 4, already. Yes, that is hard to believe but true. I look back and am amazed that I have thus far been able to keep up in my class. I just have not managed yet this semester to carve out a distinct time to do my reading and writing for this class. Every week there is a different reason for this, but I read a little here, a little there - in the car waiting for the kids to be dismissed from school, at the pool waiting for one kid to finish practicing, in the waiting room at the doctor, in the kitchen while waiting for something on the stovetop, etc. Somehow the little snippets of time add up and the reading gets done. But I really need to carve out this time, just for my sanity, because there is a significant amount of reading in this course. And it's pretty dense so far.
Things are moving along at my placement too. I'm gradually receiving clients, which is a good thing because it enables me to get a grip on the files one by one. "Grip," of course, is a relative term. I don't mean to imply that I really have a clue what I am doing. But some sense of the client history, presentation and the like is certainly helpful. So far it does not feel all that different from the work I did last year at the correctional facility. Maybe I was more "therapist-like" there than I realized. Or, possibly, I am not "therapist-like" enough where I am now at the clinic. Mmmm. Perhaps a question for supervision......
Hello everyone!
I hope you had a good summer.
I don't know how many of you have been following this blog for the past couple of years, so I will summarize. I'm a 43 year old mother of two who is attempting to complete this program in 3 years. I live in Rockville, just north of DC. My approach to the program of study has been a little unorthodox. The first year I took three courses a semester, loading up on the academic work. Half of these classes were in Baltimore and half were at Shady Grove. The second year I did my foundation placement at a correctional facility in Rockville and took all my courses at Shady Grove. I also took one summer course each year, in the intensive format. I find myself now in the third (and hopefully final!) year, with one course to take each semester plus my advanced placement. My course this semester is Cognitive-Behavior Therapies. My advanced placement is at a community mental health clinic in Wheaton.
We haven't started field so I don't have much to say about that yet, but the class has sure started off with a bang. There were complications already.....
My class meets in Baltimore on Fridays, 9-12. My kids have a 12:30 dismissal on Fridays and will go to the school aftercare program until I am able to pick them up. The complication on my first day was that the 8yo's Brownie Troop scheduled a picnic afterschool. Of course, she wanted to go. Remember, I live in Rockville. Initially I thought it was going to be ok for a couple of reasons. First, my husband insisted earlier in the week that he was going to take a vacation day. Great. Dad could pick up the kids and tolerate a few minutes at the "chickfest" known as Brownies. And I would relieve him at the picnic asap. But, unfortunately, we have been having phone and computer (DSL line) issues during the past month. Dear old dad was working on something Thursday evening and lost his document. Suddenly dad was no longer taking the planned vacation day. Write him out of the picture.
But, still, I do not panic. I reason that the odds of getting out of class substantially early on the first day are fairly high. This has been the case at least 90% of the time in the past. I explain this to my disappointed, tearful daughter at the breakfast table Friday morning, as I am racing around the kitchen making the lunches, fixing hair, checking uniforms, etc. I tell her I will probably make it to carpool and to relax.
However, I think you can probably guess things did not quite play out as I had hoped or suggested to my daughter. I made the necessary arrangements with the school for the kids to go to after care, not carpool, during the class break. I watched the clock during the last half of class, waiting. We were dismissed 15 minutes early. However, the syllabus we received in class called for ten "thought papers" which are based upon the readings. The first paper is due next week. Four of the six books for the readings are on reserve in the library in Baltimore.
So, yes, the image of my crying daughter pasted in my mind, I raced to the library and started furiously copying. In the moment, I was thinking about gas prices and time limitations; special trips to Baltimore for reserve reading seemed out of reach for me. I left the library at 12:30pm. The rest, until 1:15pm, is a blur of running through the streets of Baltimore and driving, quite recklessly and well in excess of the speed limit whenever possible, down through the garage, down 95, and across the top of the DC Beltway. My guardian angel must have been watching out for me. I arrived at the school to get the kids and they were not in their typical place. I literally ran a lap halfway around the building to locate them. At which point my 8yo -- the very child who had been so distraught about this #%&@* picnic at breakfast -- greeted me with a cheery "Hi, Mom!" and proceeded to SIT IN PLACE. I was happy to see that she was not crying because she was at aftercare, not the picnic, but she was NOT MOVING. I signed the girls out, trying to catch my breath, motioning, and telling them to get their gear together. And still, the 8yo just sat there.
At this point I was trying not to completely lose it but I had entered the zone you other mothers out there might also know something about. I had not eaten since 5:30am, but I was not hungry or thirsty. I was not aware that I was exhausted. The adrenaline was pumping. I was not capable of reasoning that I was going to way too much trouble for a picnic that no longer seemed to be so important to my daughter. I grabbed said child's backpack and started racing for the car, telling her "let's go, let's go, let's go." Her 10yo sister was lagging so, yes, I took her backpack and put in on the other shoulder. It is a wonder I did not have a heart attack.
We pulled up at the picnic at 1:24pm. I suddenly realized that I was soaked in sweat even though I had spent the better part of the last hour in an air conditioned car. The 8yo ran happily off to be with her pals. I noticed the 10yo was looking a bit peaked. She had mentioned in the car that she had trouble eating her lunch. I could see a migraine coming on. As we walked in, another mom greeted me and I was drawn into my other world -- the mommy world. I stood with several other mothers watching the kids play and shaking a little bit. I tried to focus on the conversation around me and inquire about how all the kids were adjusting to school, but I felt like I was under water. It was a little surreal. I signed up to help with the apple picking trip in a couple of weeks and to provide the snack for the April meeting. Baltimore and the reserve reading in the library seemed like another universe.....
Yes, we are back. We are definitely back. The race is on.
So here we are. The last day of the semester. As I type, commencement is underway.
In many ways it is hard to believe, but my body says, yes, it's true. I'm physically ready for a break. This week I have been pushing to do the reading for my summer course next week - Advanced Groups. I'm making steady progress and plan to be ready to go on Monday, but my energy level is definitely sagging a bit. I don't quite have the drive I had several months ago. I'm looking forward to settling in with the books I set aside over the course of the year - tangents I had to temporarily abandon so I could focus on what HAD to be done first. Just one more hurdle. So close....
I hope all of you have a rejuvenating summer. See you in the fall in Baltimore!
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