Rough Patch II

Quite a bit has changed since losing my job in October. Not long after it all happened, I sunk into a bit of a depression, and had a difficult time coming to terms with all of it. I stopped doing a lot of things I enjoyed doing (keeping up with friends, crafting,shopping etc.) and mostly just wallowed at home most of my days. My husband, seeing I was in a funk, bought me the new Sims 3 game, and for a couple weeks, I spent SEVERAL hours a day sitting at home living someone else's life.

I knew I was depressed, I knew laying around at home wasn't fixing anything, but part of me knew it was what I needed to do. I needed to sit and wallow in it a while and just be sad about the whole situation.

A couple weeks after I was let go, my former boss FINALLY answered my calls and agreed to meet up with me to sign off paperwork that is necessary to validate all the hours I accumulated while working with her. During our meeting, I pretty much gathered that she had thrown me under the bus to cover her own butt, which is why the county decided to let me go. Of course, she didn't say that, but it was pretty obvious.

Fortunately, while I was wallowing at home, I'd been taking some time here and there to look for jobs and shoot out some emails/resumes. Within 3 weeks of being let go, I had landed myself another internship. One week after that, I started my first day.

This place is just amazing. I really cannot stress this enough. My new supervisor is a REAL supervisor who actually takes time out of her day to provide real supervision and guidance instead of expecting me to do things for her and then lying about providing supervision to me. Group supervision is small (2-4 people on any given week) but it is REAL supervision with other really great interns.

As for my site, I'm contracted out to serve as school counselor for an alternative high school. This means I'm working with kids who have been kicked out of traditional high school for various reasons. Many of these kids are on probation, and have drug/alcohol/trauma/abuse histories. I'm the only counselor on site for a school of 115 kids, so I definitely have plenty of people to work with.

What I love the most is the trust and flexibility of my job. My requirement is to be there when the kids are in school M-F and do the work I think is needed. There are no requirements to see a certain number of kids, work with them in a specific kind of way, take a specific style of notes, run specific kinds of groups,or keep files in a specific kind of way. My company trusts me and my education, and trusts the work that I do, and my reasonings behind it. They back me 100%, which is something I've never ever had before. I'm able to keep files in a way that makes most sense to me, use treatment strategies that make the most sense for the situation, and see kids on whatever schedule feels most comfortable. They back me 100%.

The only downside is that I'm making roughly 1/3 the hourly wages I was making before. However, this is quickly trumped by the fact that I'm working for an amazing company and with great supervision and amazing kids. The stress of making less money is SO MUCH LESS than the stress from the joke of an internship I had before.

All in all, I'm in a much better place now. I'm really looking forward to our honeymoon coming up in a couple weeks, and am so glad I can go enjoy myself without the job stresses I had before.