Week 9: And that's a wrap.

In my final week, I think my time was filled with good culminating experiences, ones that gave me closure on clinical sessions and admin projects alike. Here's the highlights: 

Day 1: The majority of my time was spent wrapping up my administrative projects and making sure my supervisors could continue what I was doing without losing too much momentum.  I created project training documents for the volunteers, spent most of the day sending emails/having meetings to clarify project details, and put together volunteers packets. With the orientation my goal was to lay a foundation to make the volunteers' experience meaningful, and this week was to make the logistics possible. Theoretically, I made it easy for the volunteers to come in, open their folder and have everything they need to complete the tasks assigned.

I also chatted briefly with both of ITA's drama therapists about the Playback Theatre session I attended on Sunday....which was awesome. If I ever come back to Chicago, I will definitely be attending that session again.  I was only able to stay for some short forms, but someday I'll come back and participate in a long form Playback session. Playback wikipedia

Day 2: a little more admin stuff, trained my first volunteer, and observed the last Drama Therapy sessions of my internship. I said goodbye and got choked up at some sincere "I'll miss you"s.  Last week and this week, I felt like I had gotten a grip on how I fit into the session and was able to fully participate and contribute to what the therapist was doing....ironically just in time to leave. As the therapist reminded me in our processing afterwards, though, better to learn how to do it now than never.

Day 3: My last music therapy observations. As with Wednesday's sessions, it was only the last couple weeks that I really felt I had a grip on how I could best contribute to the session (in this case it was about harmonizing in the right key or holding someone's instrument just so so that they could play it properly; in Wednesday sessions it was about jumping into improvisations or fully supporting yet redirecting someone's less than relevant scene suggestions.  Of course, all of that was just in time to leave.  There were more goodbyes, more "we'll miss you"s (this time from the staff, as most of the clients there are nonverbal). I will certainly miss working with the NDD population-I learned an immense amount from learning how to get in tune with someone who doesn't communicate in a traditional verbal way.

Day 4: Clinical meeting (more goodbyes and a lovely goodbye card from the staff) was a good last one to be a part of.  ITA is planning their 40th anniversary celebration event (that includes Dancing with the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba accepting an award, in person) and they needed a theme, so the whole staff brainstormed a little at the meeting, which was fun and creative. Nothing stuck quite yet, but it was a good brainstorm. I trained my second volunteer on projects between the clinical meeting and our all staff training, which was a neat presentation given by a Speech/Feeding Therapist at another clinic nearby. It was supposed to be about development of kids aged 0-3, which is really neat. When she handed out a copy of the slides I recognized many of the developmental milestones she was discussing from Piaget's stages of cognitive development (wikipedia). I was glad to see that I've retained at least some of my developmental psych knowledge I've learned at Cornell. The training ended up, based on staff questions, turning into a discussion about how a speech/feeding therapist would evaluate and assess children, which was also fascinating. She had some cool stories about babies and young children that had little control of their mouths going through therapy to gain more control of their muscular function, including some interesting thoughts about why teaching some kids with bad reflux and gagging how to spit things out can be so helpful.

Then I scrambled to finish the last of my work follow up and emails, had a wrap-up meeting with our executive director, and set up for my final presentation. My final presentation, presented to my supervisor and the other two MT interns in the time slot for our group supervision this week, was half about Drama Therapy (of which I can now say I have some concept)  and half about my reflections on this whole experience.  The powerpoint is here, but the visuals won't make much sense to you as they were to help guide my oral presentation.
 I filmed it, but for confidentiality reasons I can't share it because it has some client stories-   it's a pretty long presentation but if you're interested in I'm happy to walk through it with you.

Closure

For the last part of my presentation, I did an exercise I called "jewel box".  I created based on some suggested closure interventions written in Renée Emunah's Acting for Real: Drama Therapy Process, Techniques, and Performance  (which I highly recommend to anyone with the question "what is Drama Therapy?".  I read it based on the recommendation of a drama therapist I talked to in August, and courtesy of the drama therapist that founded ITA). In the exercise I pretended I had a gem in my hand for each of the following "jewels" I want to take with me, and asked the interns and my supervisor to pass the jewels to one another until they reached the "jewel box", which we "closed" together and I "packed up" to take with me into the rest of my personal and professional life. Each jewel had a little commentary or story and a person it was associated with, but for simplicity, confidentiality and brevity's sake, I'll just list them here.  The pictures on the side are a few from the presentation...feel free to interpret them how you see fit!

From Clients

•  Happiness at every turn
• Anchoring reality in a single concept 
• Variability 
• Say what you mean
• Use the client’s mode of communication
• Meet them where they’re at
• Facial expressions are individual. Patience will develop sensitivity.
• So much is through the eyes. Celebrate the small successes
• Drop everything and normalize
• Observing self destruction requires extra self care
• Music is a magic reactivator
• Directness works
• 8 weeks is just the beginning

From Staff

• Read the room. Adjust to it.
• Planning is not everything, and product certainly is not. Process is paramount.
• Use your strengths, and always strive to get better
• Use the theories. Start from there and build.
• Connection. Individual connection, is everything. Love your clients, and they will love themselves.
• Be purposeful in every detail, and love your job
• What does your client need? Create what they need if it’s not there.
• When in doubt, break it down. Presenting problem→ approach. Use your resources- including your peers.
• Efficiency. Trust yourself and just do it.
• Have confidence. Not knowing is okay. 
• Sense of community in the office is important to me
• Therapy is not fixing people’s problems….It’s not linear….It’s facilitated growth.

and most importantly,

• IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE CLIENT.  

Remember how I said this was going to be an opportunity I hoped would help me grow as a potential clinician and also as a human being?  I think this list exemplifies that that hope came true. After 338 hours  (including 80 clinical hours), I learned a thing or two.

The button on the whole adventure

Last night my roommates and I played "jewel box", as well, and I got to reflect on all of the great experiences I've had outside of ITA, as well. Since it's a "you'd have to be there to get it" thing, I'll spare you our long list of inside jokes, but I can tell you that our jewel box also contained lessons for my professional and personal life, everything from watching and supporting my roommates through their job searches to experiencing Chicago through culture to living, cooking, and doing laundry for myself.

Some last jewels: my list of Chicago adventures. It includes (and yes, I made a real list.  Does that surprise anyone?  Probably not.) 338 internship hours, 77 clinical hours, 2 academic lectures, 4 swing dance events, 3 music events, 10 theatre shows, 9 other cultural things I didn't know how to classify.

I am still thinking I want to do an MSW program after a year or two off of school adventuring abroad. Client work, this internship assured me, is where I'm headed.  The capacity in which I do that? That's for the next list of adventures.

CARYN: (smiling, closes jewel box with satisfaction. To no one in particular and everyone all at once:) Thanks for making this possible.