Finishing Internship
Well, I've finally done it. After a year of an insane workload, lots of valuable clinical experience, long days, stretching myself too thin, little sleep (much of it consisting of falling asleep in my easy chair after finally eating dinner at 9:00 or 10:00 at night), and seeing more clients in a year than I had in the six years prior, I have now completed my predoctoral internship in psychology. Yay! At times, I hated the job -- the paperwork, the politics, the long hours, the exhaustion, the 200 mile-per-week commute, the language and cultural barriers, the exhaustion from putting so much attention and effort into creating therapeutic change for clients. It was also an intensely (and intensely is precisely the right word) rewarding experience. I worked in two crisis units, completed triage and biopsychosocial assessments in an emergency room, conducted anger management and juvenile sex offender groups for adolescents, and provided outpatient counseling to hundreds of children, adolescents, adults, and families ranging in age from 5 to 65 with Depressive and Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Panic Disorder, PTSD, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Substance Abuse, and dozens of other diagnoses. I did something that I wondered if I'd be able to do -- a year of full-time clinical work. I became a better therapist, gained a lot of additional clinical experience, and touched hundreds of lives, ending up with many grateful clients -- my efforts were not thankless after all. So I can honestly say I am proud to have survived my predoctoral internship.
I've also been searching for a job -- since January. Unfortunately, the job market in Psychology is saturated, with programs across the country churning out graduates perhaps faster than the field is growing, plus the economy as a whole has entered an untimely recession -- perhaps even the biggest depression since the 1930's -- making it very difficult to find a job. So I was very happy this week when my internship site offered me a formal postdoctoral residency starting in September. I was quite worried about the prospect of unemployment. But now I have a job!
And I'm moving yet again -- my fifth apartment in as many years. I live more than half an hour away from work right now, and the postdoc I've accepted will have me working at three primary sites that are half an hour to more than an hour away from where I'm living now. So I'm looking for an apartment again.
Oh well. Change is good (at least this kind of change), and I do get bored easily.
Now, if I can just get my dissertation done...