Christmas Break

This is just another reason to add onto my list of loves of the world of School Psychology: Christmas Break! It has been a fabulous, rejuvenating, and relaxing two weeks. Got to go out of town for five days with Mr. Z and my fam to play in the snow, then I still had so much time when I got back. I have watched at least 15 movies, read 4 novels, and taken a bunch of naps! Awesomeness. Mr. Z tells me that Christmas break for him is the half-way point. It's like a reward to making it through the first half of the year. Whatever it is, I like it!

Tomorrow I head back to internship. I don't know if I can say I have reached the level of competency that I had hoped to be at this point of my internship. I think I am close though. I had hoped to be a higher level of independence, but perhaps I had too high of expectations for myself (it wouldn't be the first time.) I am lucky to have the supervisors that I have, and I am getting another one this month as my horizons spread to include junior high as well as elementary. I am looking forward to it, and not trying to overwhelm myself with all the things I have coming up. But as in 17 weeks I will be graduating, there is quite a bit of stuff to do. I need to figure out what exactly I am doing for my research project: I have 3 ideas, but I wont pick one until I get the syllabus for my class that starts next week. I want to know what the specifics are for the project before I start any work on it. But I have in my mind 3 easy research projects, 2 of which I was going to be doing anyway (case study on my BICM kid, and a social skills group) so that would just mean I would need to collect data and figure out a pre and post test/measurement for my social skills kids, which is totally doable. My problem is that I need to know if I will have to do the whole IRB thing, which, if so will mess up my 17 week time table to complete the task. If that is the case I think I will just come up with a survey of some sort... but maybe I have to do a IRB with that too?? I am uncertain. But I am trying not to freak out about it all just yet.

So I've got school to finish: which includes 2 classes, a research project, and completing my 1200 hours. I've got an idea of what to do for my research project, so that is a good start. My hours are solid at the moment, I am over 100 hours ahead of schedule so I should have no problem getting the 1200 finished before May. So at least on the school front I am ok.

The internship should start heating up in the months to come as there are a whole bunch of three year reviews coming up at both of my sites - and as I mentioned - I will be starting at a new site this month with a new supervisor, Mrs. B. I am also going to be starting a social skills group at one of my elementary schools, and I've still got a handful of individual counseling kids that I need to see.

Then there is the whole BICM thing. I am beginning to think it might have been a mistake to jump into this at this time in my school life. BUT I will try my best to get it done. I have decide that this certification falls at the bottom of my list of things to get done. If I can complete it, that'd be awesome. But if not, I am not going to get upset about it. There is always next year when I wont have as many things going on.