Clinically Competent

Yesterday I received an email that stated this:

We are pleased to inform you that you have met the Standards for the Certificate of Clinical Competence in CCC-SLP and your application for certification has been approved by the Council for Clinical Certification in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology (CFCC). 

This felt like the so-very-near-completion (it will feel entirely complete when I receive my certification award packet in the mail) of a multi-year, multi-state, and even multi-country journey. 

If memory serves correctly (which, admittedly, it often doesn't), the journey began six years ago when I got the crazy idea to switch careers. At that time, I lived in Wyoming. I took prerequisite and graduate courses, and also did a 5-week Kentucky-based "boot camp" in the field, while living in Morocco. I interned in Maryland and Nebraska while living in Maryland and Alaska. I birthed, nursed, and stayed home with a child. I worked part-time. I worked full-time. 

And now, finally, I've been officially notified that I'm a "real" speech-language pathologist. I don't even remotely feel like I am. Nevertheless, if I ever will feel like I am, this is a big step in that direction.

Taking the ferry

Alaska is big. Like, BIG. Sometimes I forget this because I live in a small town and can't drive much longer than an hour in any direction before I run out of road. But even the island on which I live is one of the biggest in the country, and the town of Kodiak is really just a little pinpoint in one corner of this vast island.

One's sense of space and distance changes when one lives in a state with a relatively low population. When we lived in Powell, Wyoming, we joked that people would drive for four hours just to have lunch in Bozeman. Well, in Alaska, sometimes you have to take an airplane just to visit another town. Any town.

Or you might be able to take the ferry.

That's one of two ways to get to any other town or city from Kodiak, and I needed to get to either Anchorage (by plane) or Homer (by ferry) to take a national certification exam as part of completing my degree in speech-language pathology. I chose Homer because I could visit T's parents and give them a chance to spend a little bit of time with Rainbow.

T was already out of town for a conference, so alone with baby and her teddy bear stuffed into a baby carrier, I boarded the Tustumena last Saturday night. 

Did I mention that I hate boats and tend to get motion sick? And that I had to spend eight hours on the ferry?

Well, I got off the ferry in Homer the next morning with stomach contents and sanity intact, thinking to myself, "That wasn't so bad." I took my exam two days later, passed it by a good margin, and got back on the Tustumena in Homer that same night feeling pretty positive about the whole experience.

And then the things that had caused me to be apprehensive about taking the ferry in the first place happened. I boarded the ferry oblivious to the fact that bad weather was in the forecast, and also oblivious to the fact that the ferry crew already knew that the ferry would get into Kodiak four hours later than scheduled (making for a 14 hour ferry ride). 

I don't know if this will mean anything to you, readers, but that night we had 19 foot seas rocking and rolling that vessel. I found out the next morning--after a long, wakeful, and queasy night--about the arrival delay. No, I didn't vomit, but neither was I interested in eating or drinking much, so by the time we docked in Kodiak, poor Rainbow had a sleep-deprived, dehydrated, low-blood-sugar mama on her hands. 

She, of course, handled it all quite well. She's a great traveler. Dare I say that she actually enjoys it. I, on the other hand, found myself swearing that I'll not set foot off dry land again for quite a while.

There's no place like home

The S family is about to be on the move again. We'll be relocating to Omaha, Nebraska (T for about six weeks, Rainbow and me for about two months) in a couple of days so that I can complete my third and final externship in speech-language pathology. And despite the fact that Kodiak's June weather has been disappointingly (if not surprisingly) cold, I'm going to miss my new home. 

Somewhere over the rainbow...my degree lies.

I was really looking forward to summer on Alaska's emerald isle, to possible bear sightings, salmon berries, blueberries, wildflowers, puffins, and the like. I've had to remind myself that Nebraska summers have their own charm. Rainbow will get to experience fireflies, summer thunderstorms, locally grown watermelon, and outdoor swimming. She'll get to spend time with my parents. She'll get more socialization with other kids and adults.

For me, the benefits are a little less...fun. Completing this externship will move me considerably closer to my degree. But gosh darn it, it's going to be really hard! And that's even without the sudden change of going from being with my baby all the time to only seeing her for a couple of hours a day. 

Well, Nebraska, ready or not, here I come.
 

Leaving places

When you move away from somewhere, you aren't just moving away from one place, but from dozens--the neighborhood coffee shop, your favorite restaurant, your backyard, a spot under your favorite tree, etc.

Even though T and I aren't moving away from Maryland for a few months, next week I'll take my leave of a place here that I've become surprisingly attached to--the residential school for "exceptional children" where I've been interning since mid-May.

I'm almost ashamed to admit now how I felt about interning there when I was first trying to line things up for myself. I had picked the school because I had a vague sense that it would be a unique experience and would be "good for me." But I was also being practical; I had some personal connections that I hoped might help get me in.

Really, I was kind of terrified at the thought of actually getting an internship there. I figured interning there would be very, very difficult and that I would do a generally terrible job of working with the students.

In order to protect their privacy, I can't write about individual kids, but I can give you a general sense of the population. They range in age from early teens to 21. Multiple disabilities appear almost to be the norm. Many have Autism Spectrum Disorder, but I've also heard diagnoses or labels like obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, epilepsy, Down Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, cerebral palsy, severe allergies, digestive problems, heart problems, hearing impairments, vision impairments...and I think it would be rare for a student's file to list only one diagnosis. Many are nonverbal. Many can be very, very violent, to themselves or others.

I make this school sound like a potentially dangerous and depressing place to work, don't I? But I didn't understand how happy and joyful people in these students' situations can be. I had no idea that I would quickly develop a deep attachment to and, yes, love for many of them.

I've learned a great deal about myself from working there, too. I've learned that I can be okay in very new situations, that I can learn from my mistakes without being devastated by them.

I've learned that I might actually be capable of working with a population I never knew I could effectively interact with. More than that--I may have an actual passion for working with this population.

And now that I've discovered all of this, I'll be moving away from a unique location in the country where I could potentially have a job working with a unique population that I love working with.

But that's okay. One thing I'm really learning as I get older is that I cannot guess what the future will bring. Even in a small town on an island in Kodiak, there may be people in some way similar to these kids--people I might be able to help in the future.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy my final week at the school. I'll just have to remember to keep a lot of tissues on hand. I doubt I'll make it through the week tear-free.