File Under: I went to grad school for THIS!??!

Round about the time, oh, say, last June... when I was parading proudly across a stage to get my degree, and I was all proud of my massive achievement of conquering grad school, I wasn't spending too much time thinking about what the day-to-day life of a therapist would include. I mean, yeah, hey, I imagined it would have some rough moments, but I did not really think that it would include calling a client's home and being hung up on not once, but twice in a row, and then (because I am either really dedicated to passing along information about my clients' safety to their parents, or I am a dimwitted glutton for unsophisticated punishment) calling back again and hearing the person on the other end of the phone pick it up, belch at me, and hang it up again.

However, I am comforted by the fact that Natalie also finds herself wondering why she got a Master's degree to remind grown men they need to take showers and eat breakfast.

And just where, exactly, were you at 5:30pm on the night in question?

This is a picture of the room where I get to see clients at one of my campuses... reminds me of a police interrogation room. Fabulous for helping middle school kids feel comfortable! No windows, no couches, no natural light. Just me, some colored pencils, and travel Connect Four. Don't you wish you could come see me here?

Bleagh (blog)

So, my lenten discipline was to take the time to blog every day. You know, sort of a self-imposed commandment to stop, look, listen, think, process, and stop taking every waking moment for granted. Yeah, I know, we're seven days into lent, here I am popping up for the first time. Around last Friday I realized that it was a horrible thing to pick, should have just become a vegetarian again for 40 days, because it's so much easier to eat a vegetable than it is to be intentional, you know, and now I'm stuck because after a few days in, I knew I was either going to be a failure or a quitter, and neither sounded like very much fun. So with a little bit of "let up on the perfectionism for 10 seconds, please" encouragement from Goat, I decided doing something was way better than doing nothing, so here I am.

Anyhow, the only thing of note today (seeing as how I have 5 minutes to put my shoes on and be waiting on the front porch) is another shockingly, stark recognition of the power of culture. Many, if not most, of my clients have parents who were raised in another culture, and communication with them is not something I for granted anymore. One of my clients has a mother who has, several times now, in an attempt to tell me that she wants me to close her son's case, simply hung up the phone on me mid-sentence. So, because this feels so completely, ridiculously rude to me and I am conditioned to take it as a complete affront to the services I provide (good! free! therapy! as we say in the office... why don't you want your good free therapy?!!?), I was ranting and raving around the office about this woman who is a grown adult and cannot just tell me she doesn't want to come in anymore. To which my supervisor just chuckled, and asked, "she wouldn't happen to be a Russian immigrant?", and went on to relay tales from her cousin (also a Russian immigrant) about how people in certain social circles in the Old Country have learned or adapted as ways to get their point across. Not entirely or deliberately meant to be offensive... just trying to communicate.

Well, I don' t have the luxury of choosing how I want to communicate back to her, I have to go through due process of leaving another message, then mailing a letter, then waiting two weeks before I close the case... which is frustrating since I already know that's what she wants done. But what I really want to do is leave a message on her answering machine, reminding her that if her goal is to help her son grow into a successful adult (in America), he needs to learn some good old fashioned American cultural communication methods, like, say, actually telling another human being what you want.

I swear, sometimes I get frustrated with my kids, but it's usually their parents that drive me up the wall.