Pictures from my last winter break...

I've had a great break, and am sad to see it end....I was just getting used to not having to do homework when I come home from my internship. I start back next week, but on the bright side, only 3.5 months til I graduate!!! :)

Bye for now <3

Winter Break

So my trip California went great. I was home for 2 weeks, and it always feels like there isn't enough hours in the days to visit the people I want to visit, and do all the things that I want to do. But this year I think I did a great job, seeing most of my friends and spending ample time with the family. I even saw a few friends that I haven't seen in year! It was a great visit, and a good Christmas. It was a well needed break after the crazy hard semester I had. I will post some pictures from my trip (for those of you that don't have facebook) later this week.

My graded were just finally posted! And I'm happy to say I passed my research class!!! I was so nervous about that class, but I ended up with a B- in there. Which means I had to get a B+/A- on the final for me to have ended the semester w/ that B-. (I didn't do very well on the midterm) My final grades were an A, 2 A-, and a B-. I am enjoying my time off from school right now. I don't start back for my LAST semester until Jan 26th. I will be taking 2 electives regarding children, and then policies of mental health, and a practice class. This practice class supposedly focuses on life after graduation; so jobs, licensing, trainee hours to get licensed, continuing education, etc. I'm so looking forward to this last semester and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. After 19 years of school, I'm ready for a break! I am currently still at my same internship as last semester, I started back this week there and had to jump right back in. I now currently am running 6 groups a week, have 2 individual clients (will be getting another one in the next few weeks), and doing 1 intake (initial assessment) a week. I'm enjoying my internship, but I do know that this is not what I want to do for the rest of my career. I really enjoy working with these adults who are severely persistently mentally ill, but I enjoyed working with the children last year so much more.

The #1 questions I got from friends and family when I was home, is what am I doing once I graduate? Am I moving back to Cali or staying in NY? I don't know. I do not want to go back to Cali, but I don't know if I can afford to stay here. The simple answer is to find a job. I am planning to apply for job here in NYC, NY state, and many other states around the country. I know a handful of people that could not find a job here in the city, so my goal is to find a job...whoever/wherever will hire me.

I think I've talked enough for tonight.

Bye for now <3

And so it begins....

FINALS!!!!! Yes, somehow midterms just ended and yet finals are due in the next 1-2 weeks! How did this happen? I've started the massive feat of these papers, 3-20 pg papers and a final exam. So far I've written 10 pages in 17 hours, these papers are not as easy as undergrad. Is there a way to put an extra hour or two into each 24 hour day? Can it be 25 or 26 hour days?!? Just for the next few weeks... I foresee Starbucks, Monster, and 5 hour energy drinks being my best friend between now and Dec 16th. I take back my statement I made last year, about people making grad school seem harder than it really is. Last year wasn't too bad, this semester has been brutal, I'm so excited for winter break and not having to look at a textbook or a journal article for a whole month! I am worried about next semester, and I'm desperately hoping that it will not be as bad as this semester. I miss seeing the outside world, besides on my walk to or from school/work or to walk Willy.

I am however SO excited for Christmas, I love the holidays, and I'm planning between finals ending and my trip back home I can get out and see all the decorations here in the city. And I'm looking forward to my trip home to see all my family and friends. Hope everyone else that is experiencing the stress and anxiety of finals gets through it easier than me, and just try and focus on the wonderful break that will start in a few short weeks.

Bye for now <3

Mom and Philly

So my mom came out to visit for a week! We had such a good time! We went shopping, showed her around my neighborhood, went shopping some more, and saw some of the sites around NYC. We also went down to Philly for a couple days. It's on my list of places I've always wanted to go, and since it's only 2 hours away from NY we went! We took the bus down there and did all the touristy stuff. We wandered around old town and saw the Liberty Bell, Betsy Ross' House, Independence Hall, and so much more. We had a great time there, and it was nice to be able to both be experiencing Philly for the first time together. When in Philly you must try Philly cheese steaks. So we went to a famous place for them for lunch and then went to a great place for dinner underground where we chose to do wine and cheese tasting for dinner! They are the only place (I think) in the states that has a built in rinser on your table. So when your down with your first wine you can rinse your glass at your table before trying the second wine. It was a really fun dinner! We stayed the night, with a few glitches trying to get to our hotel, and then just shopped and saw the last couple of things we didn't see the day before. It was a great visit and I pretended that I was not in grad school all weekend! Now I'm back to reality and really behind, but it was worth it.

Grams will be here the end of Thanksgiving weekend, and will be taking me to see the Nutcracker! SO excited for that!! I have 1 month left of school, and am going to start writing finals very soon! And then I will only have 1 more semester until I have my Masters in Social Work!!!! SO EXCITED! I can finally start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Here are a couple pic from my mom's visit, the rest are on http://picasaweb.google.com/cmwright121

Halfway to finals....

So the last few weeks I have lost my social life all together. Although, it was a small social life beforehand, but I have spent most of my free time either working on papers and studying for tests or procrastinating from those by going online or watching TV. ;) I have to admit that this semester so far is MUCH harder than last. I figured second year would be harder, only seems logical, but more interesting since it's more concentrated. Well yes and no, the class I got to choose, I am loving and finding it fascinating, but the others are mandatory and just not interesting at all. This year I can't get by skimming or just reading some of the required readings either. One of my classes particular is taking up most of my time, and that is the one that I am learning how to diagnose in. It's quite interesting, but SO hard to remember everything and SO much reading each week. I'm talking 100-150+ pages for that class alone each week! Luckily, I am at the halfway point, and soon enough will be on my last semester of school! I am so excited for May to get here and not have to waste these beautiful weekends inside writing papers and studying for exams.

My internship is going great this year. It's so much different than last year. Not different in a good or bad way, just different. There is a lot more structure and paperwork! SO much paperwork....but I'm enjoying learning about the population I'm working with (severely persistently mentally ill) and getting to know the clients at my agency. I run 5-6 groups a week ranging from healthy living to teaching them about values, and I also was able to do my first intake this last week (initial assessment). I was told that I might start doing more intakes, and that may become my Tuesdays for the rest of the year...I also will shortly be assigned clients to work with individually. All in all, my internship is going great this year and am enjoying all the staff, interns, clients and the work I'm doing so far.

My mom comes to visit in a little over a week, and I am SO excited to see her! She will be here for a week and we have lots of fun things planned, including a trip to Philadelphia! I will post pictures and update my blog after she leaves!

Back to paper writing, 1 left to do.

bye for now <3

Welcome to Midterms

I have now spent the past 5 hours answering 1 of 6 questions for my midterm paper.....psychiatric exam and 5 axial diagnosis is a lot harder than I thought it would be.....the picture doesn't really do it justice, the only free spot on my bed is where I'm sitting. Oh the joys of grad school!! On the bright side, this time next year I will not have any of this to do!! :)

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2nd year internship

So I have finished my first week of internship and there isn't that much to report. Obviously because of insurance and privacy regulations/laws I can't share specific details with any of you. I am working at a agency that is a few minutes away from my apartment(which is great because I walk home and eat lunch at home everyday). I am working at a agency with a severely persistent mentally ill population. I will be working with everyone with major depression to schizophrenia or personality disorders. Many of the clients will have multiple diagnoses and many also have a history of substance abuse too. All I did this week is a lot of observing. I met all the staff members and many of the clients. There are many different interns from lots of different schools here in the city, their are psychology inters, drama/art therapists, music therapists, peer mentor interns and of course me the social work intern. I was able to sit in on many groups this week and see how different each person runs the groups. Next Monday I go to orientation, where I will learn all the details about their internal computer system and anything else I wasn't taught this week. Everyone is SO nice, and I partially worried that they are just being super nice since it's my first week. My supervisor seems very nice and eager to help me throughout the year. Everyone is willing to help me or answer any questions I have even if they aren't my supervisor, the good thing is many of the current staff members used to be interns at my agency and where hired on so they at one point were in the same situation as I am now. I was told starting next week I will start running my own groups. I'm a bit nervous to run my own group, but I know once I get through my first one it will be fine. I will be running 1-3 groups a day and then eventually will also get my own clients that I will see individually and have to check up on with other group leaders to see if they are participating in groups. I will be helping them find housing, get a job, get into a school program, whatever their goals are I will help them try and achieve. I will be getting 2 to start and eventually end with 4 or 5 clients at the end of the year.

I think that's enough information for now, I'm really excited to continue on this year and see what happens. I will update later this month/early next when I have actually had my first group and possibly even seen my first client. School is school, I'm looking forward to 2 of my 4 classes, and think I will learn a lot in those two, but I really could do without the other two. I've already started the countdown to Christmas break ;)

Bye for now <3

Last Year

The end of summer has come and now I am faced with another year of school. I am however very excited that I entered my last year of school. This is my second and last year of my grad program, and I can't wait to be done with it. I have been going to school for WAY too many years, and am ready for a break. This year I will be at a different internship than last year, but I do not start that until next week so I will update after my first week at my internship. So far I went to 3 of my 4 classes, I was going to have one Friday morning, but I found a open Tuesday night class. Now I will go to my internship Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and school Tuesday and Wednesday. I am taking Clinical Practice w/ Individuals and Families, Human Behavior in the Social Environment, Research 2, and Cognitive Behavioral Intervention. My first teacher didn't show up so I have no idea how my cognitive class will be, but my research class seems to be a little challenging and my Humab Behavior(HB) teacher overwhelmed me with just the first class. I'm very excited about HB however, because we start to learn how to diagnose and learn all the signs/symptoms to help you diagnose....I feel like I'm starting to finally get into the stuff that is new to me and that I need to learn to help me once I get out.

I am happy to be done w/ summer and back into a routine, but I'm sure soon as the stacks of reading pile up I will wish for it to be summer again. I'm loving the new apartment and the location is fantastic. The best part is my internship and school are both a 5 minute or less walk each from my place! Not much more to talk about, just the fact that I have officially started my last year of school, and am anxiously awaiting my internship to start and am crossing my fingers that I enjoy it and have as good of an experience this year as I did last.

Bye for now <3

My new apartment!!!

I tried uploading to this video directly to here but it wasn't working so I decided to post it on youtube instead. Here is the link to a video of my new apartment, my room is smaller, but the rest of the place is bigger than my last apartment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mGP_5XHCec

Bye for now <3

July

July was a very eventful month for me. For those of you on facebook you already know that the family I was babysitting for this summer had the roof of their building catch on fire and the building is now condemned. The crazy part, was I was there babysitting when I got a knock on the door from the cops saying the building was on fire and I needed to evacuate. I immediately grabbed the kid and ran out the door, forgetting his shoes along the way. Needless to say, because of the whole ordeal the mom stopped going to work to stay "home" w/ the kid and try and find them a new place to live. They lived in a few friends apartments for a few weeks and finally just got a sublet for the next 3 months. I however was all of a sudden jobless because of this fire. I have been frantically looking for work all month and applying to everything I could, I think about 250 jobs total. I FINALLY just got another babysitting job yesterday and start next week for a nice family in the Upper West Side. I will be helping the mother who just had her 3rd child last week. I will mainly be working w/ the 1 and 3 year old girls, taking them to different activities in the city while she stays with her newborn. I also have a few family that said they will use me for nights and weekend babysitting once school starts too, when needed.

Being jobless, I had to cancel the trip to DC I had planned this month to visit my friend and wasn't really able to do many fun things in the city. It's been SO hot here that I haven't really wanted to wander around the city as it is. I did however just move. My lease was up at the end of July and the whole month my roommate and I have been frantically looking for a new place. We had a low rent price we were willing to pay and many requirements, so it was very difficult to find what we wanted. But after seeing 15 apartments, all in a 2 day span, we found a really nice place in the West Village. The West Village is one of my favorite, if not my most favorite areas of the city. The best part is I can walk to school, it's only 3 blocks away, AND I can walk to my internship! The neighborhood is amazing and there is so much to do here, and it is just so pretty. I'm sure I will be posting pictures frequently of the neighborhood. The apartment is great and I will post a video of our place once we get all the furniture in and put together. I am now living w/ a girl that I went to high school with. I knew who she was, but I probably only talked to her a few times while in school. She just recently moved to NYC for law school and we decided to live together. We get along great and I'm looking forward to living w/ her for the next year or more.

That's about all that's going on in my life right now, I'm just trying to enjoy the last few weeks of my summer, I can't believe my last long 4 month summer is almost over!

bye for now <3