I am working on a second research project where I examine how my classes and coursework influence my development as an individual and professional music therapist. It has been fun to look back at things I have written before regarding my thoughts and feelings. As I go through my classes now, I am learning so much about the way I perceive things, how I learn, and even my personality and behaviors. There is one word that seems to keep coming back: frustration. I get frustrated in a couple of ways...

First is the bad kind of frustration. This past Monday, in my class for practicum, my professor passed back an assignment for the third time because we did not do it properly. The assignment was to come up with a treatment plan for our clients. The part none of us did correctly was the objectives section. In our minds, we could not be as specific as she wanted us to be without literally writing down exactly what we would say in the session. My classmate spent about 20 minutes fiercely discussing a "better" way to write her objectives with the professor. Thankfully it was not an explosive situation but I was extremely frustrated that I just couldn't seem to get it right. I get frustrated in my other classes as well (though not as bad as my class on Monday). It often feels like what I am learning is irrelevant or they put an unnecessary emphasis on some things. For example, in some of my classes, my prof will say something like, "Most of you will be teaching both choir and band, so it's important to know that..." I often tune out after the word "teaching" in a sentence because that is not and will not be my focus as a professional. I know there are good things to learn from all of my classes, but the information is presented in a way that sounds as though it only applies to certain individuals.

Another kind of frustration is with time. I am not talking about free time (though I could use more of that!). I want time to go faster so I can learn more about things I'm interested in and start doing the things that I truly love to do! I have a year and a half left in college, then a year to do my internship and work before going back to school to dive into my passion (or at least get closer to doing it). I'm incredibly thankful for Dr. Jackson. I have told her about this frustration I have, which is actually how I got started on this extra research project.

Managing frustration is a constant battle for me. I often just tell myself to be patient. Even when I am frustrated with a class, I know it will be over in no more than a year and I will simply move on. I have found that venting helps get out some of my negative thoughts and feelings but I try not to dwell on them because I know they will keep me from doing what I want to do with my life. I just need to keep my chin up!

I hope you all have a wonderful day and are getting things squared away for Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks!

Posted by Kim Yoder at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really needed this past weekend. Friday night, Craig and I drove down to Indy to meet my parents at the hotel. The drive was extremely stressful. The combination of rain and wind was so bad that we had to go about 15mph under the speed limit for quite a while; but we made it! We decided to take our time Saturday morning getting to the Lucas Oil Stadium (to watch the marching bands) and thought we would simply sacrifice "better" seats so we could avoid some of the rush to get in. Surprisingly, we actually got better seats than we did last year! After the competition, my mom, Craig, and I drove to Carmel to meet up with my dad and the band (my dad spent all day taking picture of the band). The four of us ate lunch in Carmel, and then Craig and I killed some time around Wal-mart before heading to his aunt's house for the annual Halloween party.

The party was a blast! We ate and socialized (of course), and then played some fun games. Some of the games were Halloween-oriented, while the last one was charades and had us on the ground laughing. Almost six hours after we arrived, we decided we needed to make the trip back to Fort Wayne. On the way back, at about 11pm, we almost got hit by a car. There weren't many cars out but were in the right-hand lane of the highway and another car began to pass us on the left. When the back door of the passenger's side was basically right next to us, the other car begin moving into our lane! We had to move almost completely onto the shoulder to avoid being hit. The car zoomed ahead and tailed another car until they both got off on the next exit. Needless to say, I was a bit paranoid the rest of the trip home. Thankfully there were no other issues!

The next morning, I was supposed to work at the school for Campus Visit Day. Unfortunately, when I woke up that morning, my eyes were both red and hurting. I couldn't keep my eyes open for any amount of time because of the pain, so I called in...again. I did wear contacts the day before so I am hoping that is really the only reason my eyes started hurting again. I haven't worn contacts since then and I haven't had problems again so we'll see.

Despite the downers, this past weekend was awesome and really helped me remember what it's like to have a life not full of tests and homework!

Unfortunately, things are starting to stress me out again. I had a test today (Wednesday) that had me worried for a while. Our professor gave us study guides which I had answered on a separate sheet--well, sheets. By the time I finished answering questions of the 5 chapters, I had filled out 11 sides of notebook paper! That's a ton of information to memorize. I did my best to leave out some information that I didn't think would be on the test so I could focus on the more important things. This paid off. Our test amounted to a puny 3 sides of printed paper. There were certainly questions that I didn't not know but our professor likes giving out extra credit if you add more information (pertaining to what we learned in class of course), in the margins or on the back. I took advantage of this :). We'll see how it turns out!

There is so much more going on right now but I absolutely have to get back to studying!

Posted by Kim Yoder at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)