Back when I was a lowly practicum student, I was asked to perform an assessment and offer an opinion as to the readiness of a parent for unsupervised visits with her kids. I did the evaluation, wrote up a letter for Child Protective Services, and submitted it for my supervisor's signature.
She hung on to it for a week. I couldn't figure out what the deal was--I mean, just sign it already!
When I finally got it back, I found that she had changed my recommendations so that they were no longer based on data from the evaluation. She had felt free to get it re-typed to suit herself, and to add insult to injury, my letter now contained a summary sentence to the effect that visits were "counter-intricated".
She wouldn't believe me when I told her that the correct term was "contraindicated." She argued that "counter" is a word, right? and "intricate" is a word, right? so if they are both real words, you can hyphenate them, and you have a real (compound) word, right? so what was my problem?
She refused to send it back to the typist: I refused to sign it the way it was.
Standoff.
The client never got her letter.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Thursday, August 7, 2008
How I Chose My Major
I was telling this story the other day, and thought it might be worth a re-telling.
I had been to a hoity-toity, liberal-artsy girls' school in the Old South for two years. It was not a good fit for me, as any of you who know me can well imagine. I dropped out my second summer, got an apartment and a job. A year later, I felt ready to go back, but had acquired some expenses and therefore needed to keep the day job. Back in the day, college was for young persons in dorms, not adults with jobs and apartments: There were no night schools.
But as it happened, the civil rights movement had spawned a federal grant to educate police officers, who, back in the day, only had to have high-school diplomas. Police officers work shifts. Ergo, to get the grant money, a college would have to offer day and night courses. And as it happened, a little school in my hometown decided to open a night school, The Urban Center, and make it available to citizens as well as the police. So I applied.
I was working at the time as a pool typist, and later as a Data Entry Operator, for Dun & Bradstreet. I wanted a promotion to Business Reporter, but to do that I needed some business courses. The company would reimburse a portion of my tuition for every course in which I obtained a "B" or better. Sounded good to me. I got accepted, and in due course went over to register.
Yes, children, it is true: Back in the day, you had to register in person. No Internet. Plus, since it was a night school, and registration normally happened during the day, faculty and administrative staff rather than the secretarial/clerical types were handling it after hours in the main office complex. I drew the Dean for an interview, as I was transferring in from another school. We did our thing with the credits and he wrote down my proposed major and then he left me sitting there while he went across the hall to do his thing with the punch cards (I'm really dating myself here, aren't I?)
I love books. When I'm in someone's home or office for the first time, I go straight for the books. The Dean had great books, including Cleckley's Mask of Sanity. Fascinating!
So he comes back, having signed me up for business courses, and I ask, "What did you major in?" He looked at me warily, like "Oh my god this woman is going to be one of those students who changes her major every semester, isn't she?" and answered, "Psychology. I'm a psychologist." And I said, "That's what I want to do!" and we had to do all the paperwork and the punch cards all over again. But I loved it, and still do. It was the smart decision for me.
I had been to a hoity-toity, liberal-artsy girls' school in the Old South for two years. It was not a good fit for me, as any of you who know me can well imagine. I dropped out my second summer, got an apartment and a job. A year later, I felt ready to go back, but had acquired some expenses and therefore needed to keep the day job. Back in the day, college was for young persons in dorms, not adults with jobs and apartments: There were no night schools.
But as it happened, the civil rights movement had spawned a federal grant to educate police officers, who, back in the day, only had to have high-school diplomas. Police officers work shifts. Ergo, to get the grant money, a college would have to offer day and night courses. And as it happened, a little school in my hometown decided to open a night school, The Urban Center, and make it available to citizens as well as the police. So I applied.
I was working at the time as a pool typist, and later as a Data Entry Operator, for Dun & Bradstreet. I wanted a promotion to Business Reporter, but to do that I needed some business courses. The company would reimburse a portion of my tuition for every course in which I obtained a "B" or better. Sounded good to me. I got accepted, and in due course went over to register.
Yes, children, it is true: Back in the day, you had to register in person. No Internet. Plus, since it was a night school, and registration normally happened during the day, faculty and administrative staff rather than the secretarial/clerical types were handling it after hours in the main office complex. I drew the Dean for an interview, as I was transferring in from another school. We did our thing with the credits and he wrote down my proposed major and then he left me sitting there while he went across the hall to do his thing with the punch cards (I'm really dating myself here, aren't I?)
I love books. When I'm in someone's home or office for the first time, I go straight for the books. The Dean had great books, including Cleckley's Mask of Sanity. Fascinating!
So he comes back, having signed me up for business courses, and I ask, "What did you major in?" He looked at me warily, like "Oh my god this woman is going to be one of those students who changes her major every semester, isn't she?" and answered, "Psychology. I'm a psychologist." And I said, "That's what I want to do!" and we had to do all the paperwork and the punch cards all over again. But I loved it, and still do. It was the smart decision for me.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Credit Card Security
Hello, everybody.
Just a quick post in response to last night's news to reassure everybody that we do not process your credit card transactions over an open network! Don't know what those retailers were thinking. Ours is not only secure, it is secured by a long, complex, randomly-generated WEP code.
Virginia
Just a quick post in response to last night's news to reassure everybody that we do not process your credit card transactions over an open network! Don't know what those retailers were thinking. Ours is not only secure, it is secured by a long, complex, randomly-generated WEP code.
Virginia
Monday, August 4, 2008
Kite Runner
No, not that kind. The Swallow-tailed Kite!Real unusual in our neighborhood, one showed up just north of my office over the weekend. So I left work in the middle of the day to run up the road and look at it. I rationalized that (1) it would be good for my mental health--certainly true--and (2) that anything that is good for my mental health is bound to be good for my clientele--possibly true.
This was unplanned. No scope, no map, didn't even have any extra camera gear (basics, you know, like a tripod?). But off I went. And sure enough, the Kite showed up a few minutes after I did. After soaring near the road for a few minutes and giving us several good views, it disappeared again.
I trudged up and down the road for a few yards in either direction, getting all hot and sweaty in the middle of my work day, no less, while the other birders jumped back in their truck and went on their merry way. Sensible people, that lot. I was just about to give up and go back to work when I saw the Kite pop up from behind some trees again.
I got so excited that I pulled over on the side of the road again and hopped out to try to get a photo. I was alternately looking at the bird through my binocs and trying to snap a shot off with my compact digital camera (never got one--this one was taken by another birder) when I felt something bite my ankle. I looked down and saw that I had been standing in a fire-ant hill for several minutes! So right after the LIFER! Dance, I did the Fire Ant Dance for the entertainment of passing traffic. My right foot had been smack in the middle of a mound the whole time: I was lucky only one of the little bastards had got onto me.
After that, the Kite left again and I did go back to work.
It's a beautiful, graceful bird. Its white is the purest white, its black pure jet. It soars, but then so do a lot of birds. What makes this one stand out to me is the way it swoops on bugs. When it snatches a meal off the top of a tree it does so with such grace and pin-point accuracy that it does not appear that the leaves even stir!
Great way to spend a lunch hour. I may even do it again tomorrow.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Woman on a Mission
Yesterday while surfing I found a great blog, "Made A Difference For That One: A Surgeon's Letters Home From Iraq" at http://madeadifference.blogspot.com/.
I used to carry a hot pink key chain (harder for this ADD therapist to lose!) that said "Woman on a Mission" on it. A colleague asked me one day what the mission was, and I said that it changed from time to time. His reply was a snort and a statement to the effect that 'that isn't much of a mission, then.'
Wrong, boychik. Missions, once accomplished, must be replaced. And even missions in progress, especially if there's any hope of accomplishing them, must be amended as conditions on the ground change. But mine, at bottom, has always been to leave my little corner of the world a little bit nicer than it was when I found it.
At the time of the above conversation, it was "Changing the World, One Woman at a Time" in respect of the fact that my entire caseload was female. I don't know why: In a supervision group I used to attend, we joked about the Gods of Therapy, who knew just what to send you and when. So I just respected that the universe wanted me to work exclusively with women for awhile, and I put my all into it.
One of my earliest clinical supervisors, back when I was working on my first Masters degree, warned me that I could not measure the value of my work by my clients' progress. She said that what I had to do was first, do good work and second, know that I had done a good job. And I have found over the intervening decades that she was to a large extent correct. There are so many times you can do good work and see absolutely no result for the simple reason that personal growth is an inside job. You can't make it happen for the client--the client has to do it. And some days, they just won't.
Days like those, I only know I make a difference by being part of something bigger. As a psychologist, I am one of about 98,000 nationwide. And believe me, 98,000 people, organized, can make one hell of a difference.
On the other hand, there are times when you can make a difference. A tiny difference, but a just noticeable difference nonetheless. And I find that most days--sometimes even on my day off--I can achieve that.
Yesterday a client called as she was planning a relapse. It was my day off, and I had been sleeping in. But of course I got up and made myself a pot of coffee and called her back. We spoke for ten minutes or so, and when we hung up she sounded more centered. All I had done was remind her of coping skills that she already had but had forgotten in a moment of panic, yet when I hung up I could pump my fist and say to myself, "Made a difference to that one!"
That comes from a parable about a woman walking along a beach who finds a starfish stranded above the tide line and throws it back into the sea. Another walker comments that there are so many animals stranded that way every day for miles up and down the beach, why bother? What difference could it possibly make? The woman replies, "It makes a difference to that one." Which tickled me, because I am the dotty old lady who is forever pulling over to the side of the road and gimping out into traffic to move a turtle to safety. (Made a difference to that one!) Or picking up strays and boarding them at my vet's until I can find their owners.
So when I think, What can I do? I come back to 'I can make a difference for somebody, or some thing, somewhere, somehow, today.' And that's my mission these days: "Make a Difference to That One!"
I used to carry a hot pink key chain (harder for this ADD therapist to lose!) that said "Woman on a Mission" on it. A colleague asked me one day what the mission was, and I said that it changed from time to time. His reply was a snort and a statement to the effect that 'that isn't much of a mission, then.'
Wrong, boychik. Missions, once accomplished, must be replaced. And even missions in progress, especially if there's any hope of accomplishing them, must be amended as conditions on the ground change. But mine, at bottom, has always been to leave my little corner of the world a little bit nicer than it was when I found it.
At the time of the above conversation, it was "Changing the World, One Woman at a Time" in respect of the fact that my entire caseload was female. I don't know why: In a supervision group I used to attend, we joked about the Gods of Therapy, who knew just what to send you and when. So I just respected that the universe wanted me to work exclusively with women for awhile, and I put my all into it.
One of my earliest clinical supervisors, back when I was working on my first Masters degree, warned me that I could not measure the value of my work by my clients' progress. She said that what I had to do was first, do good work and second, know that I had done a good job. And I have found over the intervening decades that she was to a large extent correct. There are so many times you can do good work and see absolutely no result for the simple reason that personal growth is an inside job. You can't make it happen for the client--the client has to do it. And some days, they just won't.
Days like those, I only know I make a difference by being part of something bigger. As a psychologist, I am one of about 98,000 nationwide. And believe me, 98,000 people, organized, can make one hell of a difference.
On the other hand, there are times when you can make a difference. A tiny difference, but a just noticeable difference nonetheless. And I find that most days--sometimes even on my day off--I can achieve that.
Yesterday a client called as she was planning a relapse. It was my day off, and I had been sleeping in. But of course I got up and made myself a pot of coffee and called her back. We spoke for ten minutes or so, and when we hung up she sounded more centered. All I had done was remind her of coping skills that she already had but had forgotten in a moment of panic, yet when I hung up I could pump my fist and say to myself, "Made a difference to that one!"
That comes from a parable about a woman walking along a beach who finds a starfish stranded above the tide line and throws it back into the sea. Another walker comments that there are so many animals stranded that way every day for miles up and down the beach, why bother? What difference could it possibly make? The woman replies, "It makes a difference to that one." Which tickled me, because I am the dotty old lady who is forever pulling over to the side of the road and gimping out into traffic to move a turtle to safety. (Made a difference to that one!) Or picking up strays and boarding them at my vet's until I can find their owners.
So when I think, What can I do? I come back to 'I can make a difference for somebody, or some thing, somewhere, somehow, today.' And that's my mission these days: "Make a Difference to That One!"
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Parcoblatta virginica
It never ceases to amaze me how long it takes psychology as a profession to get something into print. For example, it can take up to two years to get an obituary into the American Psychologist! Mail announcements from my state organization are frequently delivered days, if not weeks, after an event. Last year's Annual Report only just arrived from the national organization, in the July/August 2008 edition of the American Psychologist. Wall Street would have a cow if any publicly-held corporation took that long to get its profit statements out.
The Report rarely makes for interesting reading. There's lots of drek in there, like pages and pages of teeny-weeny type reporting who joined last year: Who cares? and pages of committee reports. This year, however, I am happy to be able to say that the issue contains a restatement of our opposition to torture. (Did you really think that we could come out in favor of it?)
We're also for health care reform and we adopted the Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Girls and Women as official policy. We also adopted as policy the Record Keeping Guidelines. Most amusing, we have officially rejected Intelligent Design: As a scientific organization, we should never have had to discuss any other option, but there it is.
I do always like to read the Report of the Ethics Committee, however, because this always includes the number and kinds of complaints that were filed in the previous year. I confess to a certain amount of morbid fascination with this data. In addition, this year I plan to use it to focus my efforts in my ethics class. For example, among the winning student papers on ethics last year was one entitled "MySpace or Yours? The Ethical Dilemma of Graduate Students' Personal Lives on the Internet," to be published in Ethics & Behavior this year. This strikes me as a perfect topic for an in-class discussion.
Apropos of the above, I Googled myself to see what personal, embarrassing, unprofessional stuff might be 'out there' about me... and discovered the Virginia wood cockroach (Parcoblatta virginica), a portrait of whom I have included above for your enjoyment. This particular one was once a denizen of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I've never met her.
Friday, August 1, 2008
My RDO
It's Friday, my Regular Day Off. I like to have at least one day every week when I don't have to go anywhere or talk to anybody, or even get dressed if I don't want to. This is not it, as we are going out to dinner with friends later, but so far it has been a quiet day at home.
For months, it seems, I have spent my "off" days prepping for classes or writing reports: Today I have mainly been reading Just Another Soldier and practicing "The Fishing Hole Song" with my parrot. I have attended to some household chores--I've done a load of dishes and two of laundry, and tried to clean up a bit in the back hall where the dog sleeps, but mainly it's just been a long-needed, relaxing day at home.
For months, it seems, I have spent my "off" days prepping for classes or writing reports: Today I have mainly been reading Just Another Soldier and practicing "The Fishing Hole Song" with my parrot. I have attended to some household chores--I've done a load of dishes and two of laundry, and tried to clean up a bit in the back hall where the dog sleeps, but mainly it's just been a long-needed, relaxing day at home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)