New Job!

I got to start my sch9ool psychologist internship a little early! Yahoo! I got assigned to two schools: a year-round school and a traditional schedule school. I was a little frustrated though because I did not receive my school assignment until 2 days before school started (I was seriously starting to wonder if I had just imagined being hired), so while the other specialists (speech and resource) are making schedules and starting to see kids, I'm still trying to organize my office. The previous psychologist left a lot of stuff behind and it's my lovely job to go through all of it and decided what is important and what needs to be chucked. Despite such a daunting task and already being horribly behind everyone else in getting up and running, I'm still really excited to be at work and to be doing the job I've been studying to do the last 2 years.

Look! That's me! I has my own office and I'm all official-like!

Me sitting at my desk in one way I tried setting my office up.

This is what I finally decided as my office set up. I like it! I have all my files and cabinets out of child reach. I can see the door, the clock and where the kids will sit. Ususally I'll sit with them, but every now and then I'll probably make a contract with a kid to have them come down to my office as an option if they are having a hard time working in class or something like that where I just need to monitor them and not actually sit and work with them. I have my little desk with pens and pencils, a sharpener, hand sanitizer and a large timer to make sure I don't keep them too long.

Now all I have to do is send out permission forms, create a group schedule and go through all the old files.... before that, my other school has to figure out when they need me so I can set a final schedule between the two schools. They have an autism cluster, so that means a lot of IEP meetings, so we need to make sure the days the Speech specialist is there are also the days I am there, so that we have scheduling options. Bah!

The principal at my traditional school told me I can start coming in and organizing my office there anytime I want.... bleh. One mess at a time thank you very much. My other office is an oddly shaped corner room, and sadly the more typical type of office given to school psychs. It definately does not compare to my beautiful, wonderful, storage filled office (seriously, did you SEE all those cabinets? That picture did even show the huge closet size cabinet in the corner!) at my year-round school.

Both schools had full-time school psychs previously and I'm afraid they expect me to do the same amount of work as a full-time psych. Because of bugetary problems in the district they've been cut back to a more typical model of having a school psych at more than one school. I can only do what is possible, so I'll do that and hope that it is enough. Wish me luck!

This is why I love this guy...

So a week or so ago, Brian and I went to some friends' birthday party and they gave us glow sticks. After the party we got together with some other friends and watched a movie at my house. When I went to go take Brian home, I saw this on the floor in front of my bedroom door and it made me laugh.

So I went ahead and added my glow sticks to create the face below.

Sometime you just have to be silly, because it's important to smile and laugh. Brian always tries to find ways to make me smile and I love him for it!

One fog to another

Life is funny right? The day I successfully defended my thesis prospectus was also the day I went on my first date with my boyfriend Brian. I pretty much went from one fog to another. My last semester of classes past by as an indistinct blur because all I remember really focusing on was my developing relationship with Brian. (I'm still responsible though and got all A's in my classes and managed to get an internship for next year, so all is good).

Now that Brian and I have gotten to a comfortably sweet place in our relationship, the thesis is going to take over again I can feel it. But only during Brian's work hours, because life is better with a little bit of structure.

Maybe someday life will slow down (like when I'm eighty) and I'll have time to blog again. But until then, I'll try to jump out of the fog every now and then and let my three readers know the story beyond the pictures on facebook of the major happenings in my life. :)

Coming out of the Haze

This is what I have been staring at nonestop for the last few months. My thesis has been a pain in the butt for a very long time. Although the idea of the project has basically stayed the same, I've had to change my research questions like 4 times. The problem is that we were working with archival data. For most projects, you put out a hypothesis, check that hypothesis by collecting your own data and then make conclusions. Here, we have to work with the data that is there. There is no collecting new data. If the data is not there, you change what you're asking. Needless to say, it's been a long road with a lot of curves.

Last fall I was having great difficulty trying to figure out what to write for my literature review because my introduction ended up being much longer than I anticipated and many of my references went into my intro instead of my lit review.

Once I got into the new year, and especially in February, it was a massive push to get my thesis to a point that I could have something to present at the NASP convention in Chicago. I skipped over writing it and got permission to do a preliminary analysis that I could present. I was able to get enough info to squeak by and impress the 8 people who came to my presentation.

After the awesomeness that was Chicago, the next challenge was to actually get the thing written so I could formally defend my prospectus. The importance of that being that until I defend, I can't apply for any internships. I've watched 6 of my fellow cohort members land their internships and lost an opportunity to have an internship in San Diego. It's been a tough time.

Well, no more! I have set my defense date for this coming Thursday! I have filled out an application for the school district in which I currently live and I am ready to submit it as soon as I pass my defense! I'm coming out of the haze of doing nothing but staring at my prospectus, willing it to make sense!

I've just kept chanting to myself over and over that these things have been happening this way to put me where I am supposed to be this next year. Let's hope that I haven't been lying to myself.

Just one more!

Also last weekend, it was a lovely day at the Temple.

Grandma and I in all our make-up-less glory. Who cares?

Going Picture Crazy

While I'm on an insomnia inspired roll, I might as well tell a story from last weekend as well. This story really stretches all the way back to last fall. I had a frightening moment where my laptop wouldn't load up and I thought I had lost all of my pictures. It was a scary moment. Turns out it was just some bad RAM and was easily fixed. I'd been given a second chance, and I wasn't about to squander it.


My school psych supervisor told me about Kodak.com where you can save as many photos as you want at the resolution they were taken with the small price of buying 20 dollars worth of merchandise each year. This seemed like a good deal that would force me to do something with my pictures every year other than put them on facebook. I spent some money on a Christmas gift, but then last weekend, I realized I needed to spend the rest or my pictures would be deleted. I had put a lot of effort into uploading every picture I had on my hard drive onto that thing, so I was going to make sure they stayed there. So I order prints. I got my prints and found some photo frames on clearance when I picked up my prints. Then I realized that I could complete a project that had been in my mind for a long, with just a few more photo frames. Because I went for cheap, not all the frames match, but I kind of like it that way. So here's the results on my grainy cell phone pictures.

I made a family photo arch over my closet with thise cute family metal thingy I bought last fall at Gardener's Village.

The love of Family makes life beautiful. That's what the metal thingy says, then I have old school pictures of my mom and dad.

On the left we have the boys. A modern day picture of me and Dad. Love this picture of me and Chris. And yes, Jordan and I are making faces. That's really the best picture I had of him and me.

On the right we have the ladies, modern me and mom, me and michelle, and the three of us on New Years a few years ago.

Then a bunch of pictures of the nieces and nephews. I LOVE these pictures! Makes me miss them a lot, but it's nice to see them all smiling at me and remember the fun we had taking them. So picture madness took over my soul and I did a few more projects, but didn't hang them because I ran out of steam and really had to focus on other non-picture related concerns. It was really fun though and I love looking at my pictures!

A not so beautiful day

Two weeks ago my ward had an awesome activity up at Soldier's Hollow. It's not so much that it wasn't a beautiful day. It was...well about as beautiful as a cold snowy day get... anyway! Soldier's Hollow is a really awesome place to go sledding. If you are willing to pay to go sledding, this place is definately worth your money.

Reason number one, they drag you up the snow hill. It's like two rides in one. Look how excited my friends Jordin is? It's awesome!

Group sledding (technically tubing I suppose) where we lash our tubes together and all scream and shout together! Good fun!

Okay, okay, when the sun came out, it was really pretty.

I totally thought I was going to have hat hair, but not so much! My friend Jordin again after we enjoyed some hot cocoa! Yum!

Some of the menfolk of my ward, Jason and Aaron.

This was the not so beautiful part, the road got really snowy. While trying to change lanes, our car lost control and was starting to run into the snow bank. Problem: There was a car in the snow bank and no way we were going to miss it. Luckily no one was hurt. Because we were in a Suburban, with some pounding on the bumper we were able to drive away after everybody in the other car was checked out, had a ride home and their car was towed away. It was the second car accident I had ever been in and it was much worse than my first. But in other ways it was a lot better than my first car accident.

I had been the driver in my first car accident. I bumped into another car while trying to leave the gas pump. My car wouldn't turn on and I didn't know what to do. My mom was at school and my brothers and sisters were all working. My dad was in Utah. I was only 19 years old and there was no one to help me. I sat at that gas station for what seemed like forever trying to figure out what to do. Eventually I got my car towed and a whole other fiasco followed that.

In contrast, we had all the help in the world in this case. An off duty highway patrolman had been helping the snow bank car before we came along and was able to coordinate with dispatch. A guy in our ward is a firefighter, so he did initial assessments on all the snow bank car passengers and he had tools in his car to help whack our bumber back in place. People in the firefighter's car were willing to sit and wait until we were able to leave and everybody in our car stayed and we all left together. The guys from the snow bank car even came in our car to get out of the cold and chatted amiably with us even though we had totally just smashed their car. What a difference. If it had to happen, and be this bad, it turned out the best way it could have. And that's all the conclusion I've been able to draw about that...

A Beautiful Day

One of the reasons I didn't blog much over break was because I spent a lot of time traveling. After being home for Christmas, I came back to Utah for a few days and then headed out to Oregon/Washington to witness the wedding and sealing of my two wonderful friends Will and Nicole! I came about a week early and celebrated the new year with Nicole's family. It rained all week, but on their wedding day this is what greeted us....

What a beautiful day! Beautiful feelings, great friends and wonderful memories.