Mid-way through internship checklist:
Leading multiple sessions a day? Check
Developing rapport with clients? Check
Doing an online session completely led by a puppet? Check
Learning how to venture out from session plans? Check
Having everything figured out? Yeah, not quite.
It is crazy to think that I am halfway through my internship experience. Every time someone asks me how my internship is going my typical response is a comment on how much I am learning. I have been learning so much by being so hands-on. However, going from one session a week in school to multiple sessions a day was a tough adjustment. The first time I had three sessions in one day I had to go back to my apartment and immediately lay down. Then my supervisor told me that having three sessions in a row is a good idea of what an almost full day looks like as a professional music therapist. I was a little bit terrified by that statement at the time because I was barely making it through, and yet that wasn’t what a full schedule would be like? Needless to say, I started to feel like maybe I didn’t have what it takes. Now after three full months of experiencing multiple sessions in a day I can honestly say it is not as tiring as I experienced at the beginning. I am beginning to feel less terrified of a full-time music therapist’s schedule and I think that is progress worth noting. I think part of that is because I am no longer in the stage of trying to s establish relationships with clients from the ground up. I am now able to try new things in sessions because I feel confident enough in the relationship that is developing. This has led me to a lot of experimentation including but not limited to, trying to figure out how Minecraft can be made into a musical experience and literally crawling around on the floor so that I can use a puppet to lead an entire session. Client-centered therapy has truly taken on a whole new meaning for me. I am learning that sometimes you really do whatever it takes in order to engage a client even for a few moments.
Something else that terrified me at the beginning of internship was when I was told that after a couple of months I probably wouldn’t be session planning at all. I think my jaw literally dropped open. No session plan? How in the world was I going to swing that? Fast forward to now and I have gone from meticulously planned sessions to knowing that I just need to go in with several options because I really don’t know what the client is going to choose. I am growing in my ability to move away from the perfectly planned out session that I have in my mind. Sometimes you have multiple ideas for a client and then they come into the session with a headache and everything you thought you had planned goes out the window. The process of simply going for it and seeing how it turns out is something I am gradually becoming more comfortable with. The moments where I try something completely new without being sure how the client will react have been the moments where I learned so much about the client and about myself as a facilitator.
Having the opportunity to work with so many different clients and have such a wide variety of experiences is truly helping me learn so much and realize all the different aspects of music therapy I really enjoy. It also helps when you get to receive some preschooler hugs as validation. So, the first three months are over and while I have already grown so much, I know there is still so much more to learn. Being a full-time music therapist is starting to feel a little less daunting by the day. I definitely do not have this whole music therapy thing figured out yet, so thank goodness there are 3 more months to continue soaking up as much information and experience as I can! Here’s to the second half of internship may it full of more learning and growing!
