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.
