All aboard!

Were you aware of it?

I learned about marital satisfaction over the course of the family life cycle today. Marital satisfaction follows a U-Shaped curve. It's high (about 50% of couples are "very satisfied" with their marriages) just after getting married, and then it begins to slowly decrease until the couple has children in elementary school (at this point, only about 10% are "very satisfied"). After this low-point, satisfaction slowly increases. By the time the kids are out on their own, it's returned to the 50% mark.

(I also neglected to tell you that my "Were you aware of it" message idea was stolen from John Hodgman's book: The Areas of My Expertise. I highly recommend it. Especially the audiobook.)

The internship continues to continue. I got a guided tour of Wyandotte County yesterday to survey all of the diversity. There's a Hilton just a few blocks from a street that I felt uncomfortable even driving down. In fact, as we were driving down said street a group of entrepreneurs tried to come up to the car to sell us drugs. Quite forward of them, I thought. My tour guide also kindly pointed out Fritz's Railroad Restaurant, where you call your order in from the booth on a phone, and then the food gets delivered to you via a track and mechanical arm thing.. but the most important part of all this excitement is that I was told they have THE BEST chocolate milkshakes. I must investigate soon. In the meantime, I'm starting to do intakes all by myself - soon I'll have a caseload just like a real live therapist! And I'm helping with a couple of groups at The Center. Hooray!

Back to School

(My Kindgergarten Class)

I started 19th grade today! I finally have a class in child, family, couples, and marital therapy. That's all crammed into one class, but it's better than nothing. So I'm excited.

The internship continues tomorrow in "The Dot." Tonight I will spend some quality time with the computer for HIPPA training and other thrilling mini-courses. In my internship class, we all share what's happening at our respective sites and learn from each other. My favorite lesson today was what to do if you are a therapist in a prison and your client holds you hostage. Good to know.

44 days and counting...

Nine to Five.

I started the highly anticipated internship at the Wyandot Center for Behavioral Healthcare, Inc. (I hope I got that name right) today. I think the first day was a success, though I'm not entirely sure right now because my brain is still processing the mountains of information I was given. I have complicated new passwords, a handful of strange keys, and far too many names to remember. But I'm elated. One of the center's core missions is to treat everyone with dignity and respect, and it's just phenomenal to be in an environment where that mission is real. I can't wait to get beyond all of the minutiae and jump in. It looks like tomorrow will include a tour of Wyandotte County and some time observing in the Crisis Clinic.

Were you aware of it?: According to my new employee orientation, people born and raised in Wyandotte County are called "Dots."

Pushing down on me.

I gathered up my scrapbook and marched over to the admissions office yesterday, where I was determined to sit until things were settled. Finally, once I explained the odds of K-State's International Studies Office getting their stuff together enough to send Washburn a note, the lady caved and made a copy of my international student card, which was of course in my scrapbook. Scrapbooking saves the day! I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing said scrapbook, since I've only had three years to do that.

There is so much to do in the next sixty days, but at least I'm happy to do all of it so far. For now, I'm off to enjoy a day of doing nothing productive.

On the Road.

I didn't want to leave you hanging with that cliffhangar ending to the red tape story. The solution offered by Washburn basically involved me getting K-State's International Studies office to send Washburn's Admissions Office an official note saying that the semester I spent abroad was part of my time at K-State. I have very little faith that this feat can even be accomplished, after the real live human I talked to at K-State told me to send an email to the director of the office, and then casually mentioned that I might want to say "urgent" in the email because this would "probably be at the bottom of her stack of things to do right now." So that's good. Because I won't get my financial aid until Washburn gets this "note" from K-State. I've decided that I'll have to camp out at Washburn on Monday until they give in. I'll let you know how that works.

Today was my last day at work. Though I won't have a daily list of the names the kids came up with for me (yesterday's winner was "dirty ho"), I've learned so many things that will stay with me forever. It's been a good summer.

Automobile.

Well, the Prius is everything I thought it could be. Here are some pictures for you, so I don't flood this page with them. I haven't yet driven the precious car, but my day will come. I'm actually quite nervous to drive something so new and shiny. So far, we're averaging 42 mpg. Not bad. And that's before figuring out all of the little energy-saving tips that can boost our mileage up another notch. In a week or so we'll head back to Wichita for a care-care class at the dealership, which cracks me up. But we'll be good new car owners and go to the class with our fellow new car owners.

Here's a long story all about red tape:

Today's adventure involved a series of phone calls to various offices at Washburn. The bureaucracy at this fine institution certainly tops all the curve-balls that K-State tried to throw at me. See, this is my third year at Washburn. And a couple of weeks ago, the secretary in the Psych office told me that the admissions people needed my undergraduate transcript before I could go back to school this year. I was perplexed at this request, as I submitted said transcript in order to be admitted to my program two years ago. But I played along and did the legwork and Washburn got a brand new copy of my K-State transcript.

Of course, I knew that it could not be so simple. So I called the financial aid office today to get a verbal confirmation that I'd be getting my money in time to go to school this semester (a trick I learned after receiving four different excuses for my check not coming in on time over the previous four semesters). They said that everything looks fine and I didn't really believe them. I told them the strange transcript story, and they said they'd double-check. Two minutes later, they miraculously discover that admissions has me marked as "incomplete" and there's a hold on everything until that's fixed.

Smiling and shaking my head at Washburn's attempts to stop me from being a student there, I called the admissions office. The guy on the phone explained with much hesitation that there is indeed a hold on my enrollment at Washburn. I explained the transcript story to him, and he said, "That's strange, because we have your K-State transcript from 2005 right here. Oh, and we have the new one too." Okay, there's a start. At least something is working, because they did get the transcript I had K-State send over. But then the guy started asking me if I went anywhere else for undergrad, and I explained that I studied in Australia for a semester but that it was on my K-State transcript and that is official. He put me on hold for about five minutes, then returned and told me to call back tomorrow to talk to the head honcho who wasn't in today. I have a sneaking suspicion that said honcho is going to ask me to get my transcript from Australia. My cooperation may have to end there.

To be continued...

(For those of you keeping count, there are nine weekends between now and the wedding. And I'm currently free during one of them!)