Hitting the ground running…and somehow finishing strong

Well, well.  It's been a long time since I've posted, hasn't it?  I've been thinking about getting back to blogging so very often over the past two years.  I just finished the Master of Science in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences in May, and I am now in my first semester of my PhD program.  My research is focusing on acoustics of voice and speech, and, clinically, I'm getting some fantastic training in order to specialize in voice therapy.

So, when I logged back in and looked at drafts of blogs I left unfinished, I found that wrote a short draft of a post I intended to publish after my first two weeks of grad school.  Here it is:

Grad school has started.  Folks kept telling me that you'll really hit the ground running in a clinical program, and they really weren't kidding!  In the past two weeks I've completed HIPAA training, read 15 articles/textbook chapters, been quizzed on eight of those articles, done my lesson plans for my first two clinical sessions, given those two clinical sessions, read through seven client files, and observed four hours of clinic.  My first research project is due in two weeks, and my first exam is the day after labor day.

On the plus side, I know this is all stuff I can handle, and I know that the faculty at my school are approachable, supportive, and brilliant.  They totally have our backs.  It always feels good to know someone has your back.

So I've been fluctuating between feeling all awesome-sauce and conquistador-like and feeling like a fraud, idiot, and incompetent a**, but I think it's getting better.  As long as the pendulum keeps swinging away from the "incompetent a**" feeling and moving more toward the "I've got this" feeling, I'll know I'm heading in the right direction.

Fast forward two years and I find it's a pretty good description of the program.  The pendulum did swing away from the "incompetent" feeling.  In a short two years, I ended up becoming a rather competent clinician.  But, man, was it an intense and stressful ride to get there!

Of course, now that I'm starting something new again with the PhD program, the pendulum has swung back to "incompetent" again.  (Ain't it always the way?)  Only this time it's in regards to all the fine details that goes into good research design.  I still feel pretty competent as a clinician, though, so that's good.

Anyways, I'm going to do my best to come back to regular blogging.  It's been so long that I honestly don't know where to begin.  There's some scientific stuff I need to correct in my anatomy and physiology section.  I would also like to write up some stuff about teaching singing more efficiently and maintaining a technique.  But for now, I might just jump in with things as they are in my life now and fill in as I go. Gotta get my feet wet again with this blogging stuff.