Orientation and quite possibly my last first day of school

It's official...tomorrow, my new university owns my life. Sort of. I will be there every fall, spring, and summer until August 2012 (or some time around there) when I will graduate with my master's degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. I thought at this point I would feel a strong sense of dread. Not the sort of dread one feels on the way to the guillotine. Nothing horrible. I expected the sense of dread one feels when she realizes that in exchange for her shiny new iPhone, she must sign on for another two years with AT&T. It's that feeling of obtaining something truly great and realizing that there is a price attached. But I don't feel that any more. I realize that I'm locked in to a serious commitment for over 2 years, and that it's going to be a lot of hard work with some trade-offs (one being that for the last 8 months or so of my program, I can't work because I have to work full time, forty hours a week, at an internship. Broke never looked so scary). On the positive side, this is what I've always wanted to do. A friend of mine recently told me she couldn't see me doing anything else. Neither can I.

I went to orientation on Thursday night. In my nervousness, I walked out of it at one point believing I was in the wrong room. Then I sat at a table that was mostly faculty, and when I realized everyone looked older and more sure of themselves, I opted for a table at the front. Unlike the other tables around me, my table wasn't chatty. One girl was in the middle of Breaking Dawn, someone else was texting. A few stared blankly into space, and I exchanged occasional awkward smiles and "What are we supposed to do now?" glances with the girl across from me.

There was an extremely long powerpoint presentation covering the basics for all three Counselor Education programs. There's school counseling, marriage and family therapy (MFT), and mental health counseling (MHS). They introduced us to all the important faculty and shared their research interests, discussed how good our program is and why what we're doing is different from psychology (if you don't know, why are you in this program?).

[We will now take a brief intermission to explain what the difference is between what I am studying and what other people who want to become psychologists are studying...Please note that while I do have my Bachelor of Science in Family and Child Sciences, I am only just starting my graduate program and what I am saying may not be 100% accurate or complete. But I'm at least 90%, I think.]

Some people may think (unfortunately) that MFTs are not as equipped as psychologists or that getting your license in MFT rather than psychology is an easier way to go. Total B.S. The reason I decided to become an MFT was not because it was easier or less work (because, hello, how many years am I spending in grad school? Plus, that's not even counting my doctorate which I plan on obtaining at a later date). What I love about MFT is that it takes into account more than a person's diagnosis. I am there to figure out how I can help change the way this person lives in order to make all aspects of their life more affective. After all, when you think about it, when a person is having a difficult time it affects more than just their overall mood. It affects performance in their career or schoolwork, relationships with others, social interactions, involvement in the community, etc. The whole system in which they live isn't working and they need a new system. I help them make that possible in addition to dealing with whatever diagnosis (if there is one) that I've found to be accurate for that client. MFT takes relationships between the client and other areas of life into account. AND we are trained to deal with whole families. How many entire families do you know that see a psychologist together?

Didn't think so. *Climbs off soapbox*

Back to orientation. They discussed classes (I guess some of the classes are required for all 3 programs, so we'll be mingling), and how after one C you're basically screwed. I'm not worried. Unless we're talking about math, the C's I've earned in my lifetime were because I wasn't getting the help I needed and applying myself. I want to be in grad school, so C's aren't an issue. That didn't stop one girl from asking about ten million questions about how if she thinks she's going to get a C, can she drop the class or get an incomplete. Why the hell would you anticipate failure? *shakes head* Anyway, it went on like that until the whole thing ended with a few friendly psychological tests. You read that right. Apparently this is part of an evaluation that we have to fill out several times during our program. My personal favorite was the sentence completion section. I would love to know when it was created and by whom, since I found some of the sentences to be a little, shall we say, archaic. For example:

A man's job ___________________.

A man feels good when ______________.

A wife ____________________.


Who wrote this shit? June Cleaver? At this point I was late for a date with my boyfriend and the orientation had run over the allotted time by about half an hour. I was hungry and tired and wasn't in the mood to think of truly appropriate answers and besides, shouldn't these people get the real me? So I wrote a few things like:

A "man's job" is a social construct. Yay feminism! :)
A man feels good when...I really wouldn't know. I think you should ask a man.
A wife should be equal to her husband.


And I'll keep on filling it out like that until they update it. Let's get the 2009 version in there.

The All-Important Question

As the countdown of days until I begin graduate school continues, I have one important inquiry on my mind: what the hell do I wear to the first day of class?

Before you start rolling your eyes, I should clarify: I'm no fashionista. My usual uniform is a t-shirt and shorts with my hair up in a cheap hair clip from CVS. I'm not looking to impress guys, because I already have one (and he thinks I look sexy in my sloppiest t-shirt and sweatpants). The reason I'm wondering has so much more to do with what grad school is about and what being a grad student makes me than the actual apparel. For instance, do we dress up because now we are supposed to be professionals? Is the old college standby of wearing pajamas to class no longer acceptable? Do I wear heels? Are sandals okay? Does wearing a pair of shorts mean I'm disrespecting the process? If I dress in my best interview outfit and everyone else is wearing jeans, have I immediately stuck that "40-year-old in a 22-year-old body" label on myself once again?

As excited as I am about FINALLY having the chance to study what I want and take courses in which I am actually interested, I'm scared. What if I'm not good enough for this? What if I'm not ready? I feel alone for the first time in a long time, because this is the first point in my life that I have been doing something different than my friends. Up until now, we all were in the same grade at the same time, going off to college at the same time. This summer, after we all graduated, we all went our separate ways. Some of my friends moved back home to be with their families while they found jobs. Others moved to different states. One, I am proud to say, is traveling North America with a prestigious horse show. None of my close friends are in graduate school. I am the lone ranger. I also seem to be one of the few people I know who is absolutely certain of what she wants to do with her life. It doesn't make me better than anyone else. It just means I'm taking a different path, and sometimes we travel parts of the journey alone (sort of).

I feel both older and yet ridiculously young simultaneously. I feel incredibly young inside, and I often wonder how it happened that I am old enough to even be in graduate school. I am a college graduate (thank you, Mom), and yet I feel so inexperienced. I am so inexperienced. I imagine myself on the first day of classes sitting next to someone and saying, "Hi. I'm Ashley. Want to be my friend?" One of my greatest hopes for the coming semester is to not only succeed academically, but to make friends. Friends who understand my love for this career path and are just as excited about the possibility of seeing clients as I am. On the flip side, I feel strangely mature. I am entering this phase of my life where I will be setting myself up for a (hopefully successful) career.

I'll let you know what I wear.

Sorry, I can't. I'm busy until 2012.

At times, I still find it hard to believe that I am actually starting graduate school to become a therapist. For years I've thought this could be my calling, my fate, my destiny...and yet I tried several other majors and career paths before I finally gave in to what I desired all along.

I tried being a creative writing major before I stopped writing altogether. That wasn't for me. Then I tried to be an elementary education major. I would be a teacher. I would influence the lives of young people a la Erin Gruwell (who, in case you did not know, started the Freedom Writers). I was excited about this option. I dreamed of teaching first grade, of being loved by my young students. Of instilling a love for learning and reading. Of being Teacher of the Year. Of loving my job every day even though I would be overworked and extremely underpaid.

And then the classes started to get to me: all the discussions over No Child Left Behind and all the ways I could possibly get into trouble with parents, administrators, and the law. The knowledge that perhaps I would have to teach to a test and not teach in the creative way I desired. I lost interest. The flame of hope, of excitement, that had once burned so brightly was lost. I was lost.

What saved me was my minor program of study: Family and Child Sciences. Almost all of my instructors were doctors of Marriage and Family Therapy. They told stories about their clients and their experiences. I was hooked. It was what I wanted all along, and I was finally ready to reach out and grab it. I switched my major to their program and began taking classes in family crisis, parenting, child development, child guidance. I was thrilled. I knew what I wanted to do, and I went for it. My senior year of undergrad, I applied to a university in Orlando for their Marriage and Family Therapy program. I was asked for an interview and later accepted into their newest class of students. According to my advisor, I will be graduating in the summer of 2012 after spending three years in year-round, full time classes (including summer, obviously).

Here's to the next chapter.