Practicum

I have to write about practicum. Have to, have to, have to. I guess this is the writer in me, unable to not use words to process an experience.

All the angst, all the anxiety, all the stress, all the uncertainty--and in the moment, when talking to the client, it all fell away and I knew that I could happily spend the next two decades in the room, head tilted to one side, trying to see how the pieces of the puzzle of a life fit together and what twist we could give to the kaleidoscope to make them really sparkle.

And then, watching on camera, while co-worker X worked with client Y (who was supposed to be mine) and supervisor Z said, "Oh, no, this is not good," and calmly leaned into the microphone, saying "Ask her if she's hearing the voices now," and everyone knew at the same time that this was not a client that we were going to be able to help, not now, not ever. X just got sweeter and gentler and milder while she followed Z's instructions and that...I don't want to have that experience. I think I could do it. I could stay calm. But X is not going to sleep tonight while she worries about Y. She sat two feet away from Y knowing that these problems were way beyond our scope, way beyond anything an hour of conversation once a week could help with, and she had to know in the minutes when Y told her that X was a lovely name and that she was a nice girl that she was probably not going to ever be allowed to see Y again, both a good and a bad. But ugh. I had the jitters afterwards and I wasn't even in the room.

At the end of the day, simultaneously jazzed and terrified. Pretty much how I've felt about it all along. But a little more tilted to the jazzed side. We'll see how the next weeks go. But today I got so reminded of why I wanted to do this job. End of the day, I feel good.