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.