Your practicum training is one of the most
important parts of your graduate school experience. Not only is it the time
when you start developing your clinical skills. It is also the time when you
begin to establish a strong foundation for your professional identity and
learn to build meaningful, productive relationships with your future
colleagues.
Ultimately, the experiences you have and
relationships you develop during these formative years are the key to
ensuring that you have a successful, fulfilling, and effective career long
into the future. This is especially true since your early supervisors
usually provide reference or recommendation letters when you apply for
internship and your first post-doctoral job. As witnesses from the days when
you first struggled to write your first actual testing report and staff your
first therapy case, they will be in a position to validate your early efforts.
They will also be able to attest to your professional commitment and the
development of your character.
No one else will have this perspective on
your development. Your professors know how well you learned to
conceptualize and analyze. But, your first supervisors will know how
well you applied knowledge and what it took for you to build
your competence. More important, they will start formulating this
perspective as soon as you begin, and first impressions are difficult very to overcome. So, you
owe it to yourself to start out with strong footing in these relationships.
. . from your very first days. How can you make sure this happens?
By establishing credibility
and a solid reputation right away. The following guidelines will get you
started on this path:
- Treat your practicum experience as a
professional job. Show up on time, dressed appropriately and
prepared to work hard. Let your supervisor know when you arrive onsite
and when you get ready to leave. Immediately inform your supervisor if
you are running late or need to be absent because of illness. Remember
that arriving late because a class lecture ran over or you had to study
for an exam is a poor excuse for a training professional. Also, arrange
any scheduled time off far in advance and negotiate it professionally
with your supervisor. In every case, take responsibility right away for
addressing any problems that arose as a result of your absence.
Regarding your professional image: Even though you are a student, your
clients do not care. In their minds, you are their therapist, so they
expect you to dress and act appropriately.
- Avoid cutting corners with your time .
Remember that time is the basis psychologists use interpreting
the significance of nearly everything in clinical work, from test
performance and mental status to dynamic issues in psychotherapy. So, you cannot afford to
underestimate the power of negative impressions you will convey if you
have poor time management skills, especially to this particular
audience. Show up on time for the start of the day and every
meeting. Never leave early without first clearing your decision
with your supervisor. Ultimately, he or she expects to
treat you as a "professional-in-training" rather than as a
student who regularly needs accommodations in managing his or her
responsibilities. Do whatever it takes to grant this wish.
The last thing your supervisor needs is to wonder where you are or why
you are late: This pattern might even appear as the tip of an
iceberg that leads him or her to lose trust, to start asking questions,
and to shift into micromanaging your work.
- Use your unscheduled time productively.
Rather than using your down time to catch up on reading for class or
check your email, spend
this time reading charts or getting to know the other professional
staff. Volunteer to help out at the agency wherever possible, whether answering the
telephone, cleaning out a spare office, filing papers, or typing letters
for the agency director. Bear in mind that no task is beneath someone in
training - even someone in a doctoral program. (I once had a
trainee who said she felt the boss was exploiting her by taking
advantage of her word processing skills to type a report for him. She
felt that her days of being a secretary had ended when she began her
doctoral program. I wanted to tell her how often I have changed ceiling
light bulbs and installed window air conditioners as a licensed
psychologist. It simply goes with the territory in community mental
health or emergency room work. Ironically, she failed to notice how much
time he later invested in providing her with spontaneous, back-up case
consultation.)
- Prioritize your responsibilities
strategically and advertise your commitments publicly. For today’s
multi-tasking students, practicum can feel like "one more thing to
fit into an already-overwhelming schedule". Thus, without realizing
what they are doing, trainees can inadvertently communicate the wrong
message about their level of investment in the training. For
example, they can talking about when they are not available to be
at the agency (because of their class schedules) rather than when they are.
This attitude can quickly set a tone that they value coursework over
clinical training. From a
supervisor’s perspective, however, your practicum should be your
highest priority, since it is the place where you actually learn to do
the work of a professional. You would be smart to convey the attitude
that you agree. No matter how tempted you feel to hide behind your busy
schedule and give preference to your class requirements or outside
employment, remember that they are secondary in importance to your
training.
- Take the time to show your supervisor(s)
that you will do whatever is necessary to fulfill your responsibilities
to them and to your clients. Always remember that providing
your clients and the agency with high-quality service demands a strong,
reliable commitment from you. Although most supervisors will work
to accommodate any necessary schedule changes or absences, the last
message you want to communicate to them is that you are "squeezing
in" the experience they are working so hard to provide for you. The
fact that you have a lot of demands is entirely your responsibility. Do
not let your difficulties with managing outside commitments spill over
into your training experience and tarnish your reputation.
Remember that they are training you by choice, not necessity. Show
your gratitude by always conducting yourself professionally.
- Establish a strong relationship with
each supervisor and work to maintain it throughout the training year.
Regularly cultivate and nurture the level of trust your supervisor
places in you. Start by following his or her clinical or administrative
recommendations closely, gradually learning to question or challenge
them as your competence increases. Always be prepared to defer to your
supervisor’s judgments - even if you disagree with them - because he
or she is ultimately responsible for the outcome of any situation that
involves you and/or clients. Routinely check back with a supervisor
after implementing the recommendations to inform him or her of what
happened. Do not assume that he or she feels comfortable assuming that
everything turned out all right.. Instead, maintain the relationship
responsibly by "closing the loop" Always remember whose
license is on the line - it is not yours.
- Make sure that you study something that
you genuinely want to learn. Do not simply accede
responsibility for your training to the staff by learning only what you
think they want you to learn or what you believe future employers will
expect you to know. You are investing a great deal of time, money, and
energy in for this training experience, so make sure you get at least
something significant that you want for yourself. Maybe it’s studying
a particular psychological test in depth and gaining expertise with
administering and interpreting it. Or, maybe it’s learning to
conceptualize cases using your favorite theory. In any case, promise to
yourself is a bit like making sure that you stop long enough during a
party you are hosting to make sure you get to eat one of those
scrumptious deserts you provided for your guests. Rather than simply
hoping that you will wind up with the qualifications you want, take some
responsibility to make sure that it happens.
In addition to the above, you deserve to know
one of the basic truths about practicum and internship training: Regardless
of how much energy, time and commitment training demands from supervisors,
most of them view new trainees as they would a breath of fresh air. As a
budding therapist, you bring a level of curiosity and enthusiasm to their
program that could rightly be called infectious. Anyone who works with an awestruck,
well-intentioned trainee such as you cannot help but experience your
triumphs vicariously and rejoice along with you as you learn. Do what it
takes to be that trainee: The challenging questions you ask with a
positive attitude and your commitment to excellence have the potential to
completely revitalize any work environment.
No matter how exciting your supervisors
initially found their jobs, any work becomes routine - and more than a bit tedious -
eventually. So, the chance to immerse themselves in the ongoing learning
process of new trainees can bring a new perspective to their work. In many
cases, an enthusiastic trainee can even remind them of why they originally
entered the profession and restore their latent passion for it.
With such power and influence resting in your
hands, you would be truly negligent if you failed to use it to your full
professional advantage.
