Friday Fun

Another week has gone by without one blog entry since Monday!  I’m beginning to figure out that I may lead a boring life…either that, or I don’t have time to sit down and write.  Yeah.  I like that excuse.   “I don’t have time”…it’s a handy generic excuse which causes sympathy to well up in the reader, (please let me stay in my fantasy world).  

Tomorrow morning I’m taking the licensing exam for School Psychology.  I’ve been reviewing some but I really need to go over some things this evening.  I want to pass it the first time so I don’t have to cough up another $135.00 to take it again.  And it’s EARLY.  It starts at 7:30am.  Does anyone’s brain work well enough to take an important exam at 7:30 in the morning?  I don’t think so.  Tip of the day:  Drink your quota of water.  A well-hydrated brain works better.  

Work is going well, and I’m feeling pretty good, now that Ms. Pancreas is settling down.  I am again amazed at how very little I know about the practice of school psychology, even after almost 6 years in school, earning two degrees.  There’s nothing like practical experience to help you realize how little you know.  I am grateful that I work with three school psychologists who have between them, I would guess, at least 50 years of practice.
But, the field is always changing, and “young” people like me are being trained in new ways of doing things, so maybe on some level, I’m contributing something.  

My advice to all of you about to go on practicum:  Learn all you can in Diagnostics, and in Personality Assessment.  You’re gonna need every scrap of knowledge you can possibly accrue in both of those classes.  It’s important to not only have the book knowledge of facts (How is a Learning Disability defined?), but also to know the broad concepts that undergird assessment, test interpretation, and evaluation.  I think the information gathering is fairly easy-interviews, observations, the review of school records, and the testing.  The hard part is taking all those individual pieces and putting them together to create an accurate picture of the child.  Your hypothesis concerning what’s wrong may or may not be true, and if you say it’s true, you better have empirical evidence to back it up.

G, thanks for the email.  She emailed me recently in response to my musings regarding God allowing evil to exist.  She recently has come through a spiritual awakening, so to speak, and has a fire in her soul I’ve not seen in the 30 years I’ve known her.  She’s been in a life-long search for God, going down all kinds of different paths, and some of them, quite dangerous. But she now knows the meaning of the words spoken by Jesus, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  No one comes through the Father except by Me.”.  I’ve been a witness to her remarkable journey and someday, she’s gonna write a book.

To all who are getting ready to take the licensing exam-may your #2 pencils hang in there with you.  May you think clearly and remember well. And may you never forget that there is no such thing as a “standard battery”.  (ha)