After my summer courses ended in California, I took a few days to road-trip back to Dallas, stopping to adventure with my sister, Kristal, in Phoenix for a few days then to west Texas to visit my good friend Mitch and his family. Kristal and her friends introduced me to the world of 4-wheeling and shooting. Who knew that jacked up Land Rovers could do such crazy climbing over nearly vertical boulder terrain in the dessert?? Well.. now I know..
After just over a week back in Dallas, I'm prepping for a move this Friday, up to UNT in Denton for my graduate coursework in Clinical Mental Health. I'm excited about my new roommate (she's awesome!) and the opportunity to apply some of my novice interior design skills to the new place! It will be fun to live amidst the college and young professional population again.
Already I'm finding myself challenged and intrigued by the material we are covering in class. On day 1, my professor said, 'we are reflective helpers.. we must first process the information we are learning and only after we have reconciled it with the way we live can we apply it in a client setting' (paraphrased). Needless to say, I've been doing a load of processing already and it's only been a week of coursework. Suddenly I'm asking a whole slew of questions of myself that I don't remember asking before - why exactly do you feel that way, what led up to that type of thinking, how does this dictate your actions?.. this is, what we are in one of my courses referring to as, the language 'Shrinkish'.
I'm taking a 12 hour graduate course load, which, currently looks like about 36 hours of studying and 12 hours of classwork each week. I feel a little slow on the uptake given that I've been out of academia for almost 4 years now, but I'm encouraged by the energy and enthusiasm of our professors. This will certainly be a cool semester!!
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