The Grad School Journal: Masters Edition

I have been working on a project this summer specifically for students in 1-3 year graduate programs, called The Grad School Journal: Masters Edition. That is most likely going to be a Masters degree, but it could also be another professional program of some kind. This journal is meant to help provide space to emotionally process the graduate school experience while encouraging goal setting, providing motivation, and guiding the reader through personal and professional development. The Grad School Journal is just a beginning; it is meant to be a helpful addition to one’s life without adding too much of a burden and can be done at your own pace with your own modifications. If you are starting grad school or know some one who is, consider getting this guided journal to help start on the right track. The Grad School Journal is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle forms!

Supervision Thoughts

Throughout grad school you’ll have a variety of supervisors. Each will have their own experiences, needs, and style. Your experience with supervisors will seriously shape your experiences in grad school.

I have been lucky to have some INCREDIBLE supervisors over the years; ones that I have loved to work with and have helped me to grow in ways I could never imagine. They have been supportive and insightful, discerning when I need support and when I need corrective feedback. These supervisors have also cared about me as a person, and made me feel like I was safe, sane, and understood. If you’re lucky enough to have one of these supervisors (one of my supervisors this year appears to be going this way) then take in every minute of that time. Really push yourself to learn and grow in a safe environment. Be honest about your struggles and areas of confusion. This is the time to really lean in.

But what if your supervisor is… not so easy to click with? What do you do when you feel like you’re trapped with a bad supervisor?

There’s a few different things that can happen here. First of all, there is definitely a point where you need to get a new supervisor. Your safety and education are most important. Someone who is abusing their power and bullying you is never okay.

But sometimes you just have a bad fit. And that’s frustrating, especially when your peers have a supervisor they really get on with. I have a supervisor like that this year, too, just at a different practicum site. Here’s what I say to that: know what you can handle, consult with your school representative as needed, and make sure your requirements are being met. At the end of the day, sometimes we just need a warm body to get the hours required by our program. Is it ideal? No. But rely on the support in your program and from your peers. Be willing to learn from each other, and you can make up for some of your supervision woes.

As for the supervisor themself? Be kind, be respectful, work hard, and try to take their feedback with grace. It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about you learning and making an effort to grow as a professional. The reality is they’re responsible for you on their license. They can still give you good marks etc. when you feel like it’s a bad fit. Don’t let them ruin your year or keep you from getting the hours you need. Advocate for yourself when necessary (I had to do this the other day–it sucks but it’s does make a difference when you are respectful but firm).

What are your best tips for working with supervisors? How do you know if someone your working with is a good fit? Let me know below!

It’s Mental Health Month!

May is #mentalhealthawareness month! 🧠

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. It can be impacted by our genetics🧬, life experiences 🏕, and family history 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦.

Mental health is just as important as physical health!💚

Just like there are things to do to maintain physical health like taking vitamins and exercise, there are things we can do to take care of our mental health. Some of these things include: connecting with others👯‍♀️, going to therapy🛋, getting medication if needed💊, getting enough sleep😴, staying active🧗🏼‍♀️and learning coping skills🧘🏼‍♀️

Throughout this month I will be making several posts about mental health! If there’s anything you want to learn about specifically, let me know!⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

LDR: Tips & Apps

Something that has been a part of my grad school story is dating. I met my boyfriend during my M.A. program while I was applying for doctorate programs. Much to my amazement, this wonderful man was the first one who encouraged me to attend my current program because he knew it would be an amazing opportunity–even though it meant I ended up moving 1,000 miles away. He helped me pack, he comforted me when I said goodbyes to loved ones. He even made the drive with me in one shot, and then he helped me unload and unpack everything in the middle of the night when my electric company turned on the wrong apartment’s power. He wasn’t grumpy about it, he was patient, kind, and supportive. He made where I am today possible; I could not have done it without him and I am so thankful. And now we’re doing long distance, which has been a new and challenging and rewarding road all of its own.

While we have a long ways to go on this LDR journey, I wanted to take some time today to share what’s worked for us and what I’ve learned.

1. Communication is key: if you feel like you and your partner need to work on your communication skills, and LDR will really highlight this. Talk about how you give and receive affection with one another. Make efforts to connect in some way every single day (even if it’s just a 10 minute phone call check in).
2. Effective Care Packages don’t have to be big or all the time. For example, my boyfriend occasionally sends me really thoughtful packages filled with goodies! I can’t really afford to send a large package (getting all the goodies, paying the shipping cost, etc.) so I do my own versions by sending him monthly cards, making a monthly playlist, and occasionally sending him gifts through amazon!

Go on dates. Yes, dates. Make a date jar of ideas for how you can spend an evening together and pull one out once a week. Something we love to do is buy ingredients to make the same meal, then we FaceTime and cook together and eat together. Some other options for date night include: movie nights, be fitness accountability partners, watch a show together, read a book together, and play games long distance together.

Count down timers are great ways to make time apart feel shorter. Always know the next time you’re going to see your partner; if there’s a possibility you’ll see them sooner that’s cool too, but set the timer for the set in stone days of reunion. Everything else will just be a bonus.

Be proactive and open with your partner. I make an effort to connect with my boyfriend every day, and I don’t expect it to be sunshine and roses all the time. When I’m having a horrible day, I tell him and vice versa. We comfort each other. When I get really exciting news (even if it’s small) I share that joy with him and we can celebrate together. I want him to feel involved and informed on my life: he knows my goals, who my new friends are down here, and my stresses. When we miss each other extra we build in an extra date to help. We aren’t mind readers, so we’re committed to being open and honest about where we’re at so whatever comes up can be experienced together.

Airport days get easier. They always suck. Always. I’m not going to lie about that. But the more you do it, and when you know when you’ll be together next, it feels a lot less heartbreaking each time you get through it.

Find someone who has done long distance before. I can’t tell you how much I have learned from people who have been in LDRs before me or are also currently in one. Whether or not they worked out in the long run, I have learned so much about communication, tips, and found comfort in community. This is honestly such a must and important support for our relationship that I didn’t realize I’d lean on so heavily.

Finally, there’s some practical apps, websites, etc. that you can use to help you connect with your LDR partner. Here are some of my favorites:

• Rabb.it is a website/app that allows you to watch movies and TV shows together long distance without having to sync up pressing play etc. You can make private groups and rooms to watch things together and it includes a chat and microphone option to hear the others watching. It can be finicky, but it’s getting better with each update!
• Marco Polo is a wonderful app that lets you video chat with people. You can make group chats or just talk to one person. It saves the videos and lets you save videos (your own or another’s) to your phone. It also tells you when people are watching live which is fun! It’s like a step up from texting and snapchat.
• Social media. Talk to each other across platforms: IG, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, tumblr, Reddit, etc. Share what you like and see so they can experience it all with you!
• Try out LDR specific apps like Between. They’re cute and a fun way to keep track of anniversaries, photos, and important events.
• If you and your partner like playing games together, try different ways of screen sharing or find an online place to play games together as a means of quality time. There are tons out there, so find one that works for you!

This has been a long post with lots of information, so if you made it this far thanks for sticking with me! If you have any other LDR tips, tricks, or resources please share them here! I’m sure I’ll be making more posts about relationships in the future and would love to learn more for myself.

Supporting Peers

Okay this is really on my heart today as I just came from a pretty brutal group supervision today, and we recently had student government elections that my peers were running in. It’s been rough, and apparently you can tell. As one of my professors put it today:

You guys are usually buzzing with energy at the beginning of class and today you’re all looking like zombies… are you okay?

And that’s the Big Question, isn’t it? Are you okay? As I’m pondering all of this in consideration of my peers–the harsh comments, lost elections, the general lack of encouragement– I am wondering how to best support those around me.

Sometimes it gets so easy to get lost in my own anxiety, my own assignments, my own agenda, that it is easy to overlook those beside us. Being in a cohort model especially, I am not as concerned about the competitive nature that could easy consume grad students. This gives me a unique opportunity to think about those around me and how I can possibly throw a lifeline to someone.

Now, you all know I’m a broke grad student who can’t be buying everyone a round of pick-me-up coffee. But that doesn’t mean I am helpless! This week I am going to commit to doing something nice for someone in my cohort. And if it goes well, maybe I will continue to do this once a week until the end of the school year! I’d like to invite you all to join in with me and find someone in your life who you can show a little extra support. You never know what small act of kindness can turn into someone’s lifeline.

Here’s some FREE nice things you can do for someone this week:

• Write them a note of encouragement
• Give your peers a genuine compliment (on their work, appearance, etc.)
• Ask someone how they are and mean it–make time to have this conversation well

Send someone a positive text if you notice they’re a little off

Offer to edit someone’s paper if they want a second set of eyes

Write someone you’ve worked with a recommendation on LinkedIn

Try to include the human who gets left out of conversations and events

Send an email of gratitude to a mentor or professor who is important to you

Try to be electronic free when having conversations with people this week

Invite someone to study or eat or take a break with you

We all need a little boost now and then (or often). Think about the people who have made a difference in your life during school and how you can pay it forward.

Got something else to add to my list of random acts of kindness? Share them in the comments! 💖

Honest Review of the App Shine

You all know how much I adore the mindfulness app, Stop Breathe and Think. I’ve mentioned it several times and described it, and it is my favorite and go to app for mindfulness. It lets you mentally, physically, emotionally check in, and allows you to track yourself in those areas and mindfulness. It also has daily messages and recommendations. I recommend it to my clients all the time. That being said, when an ad for a new mindfulness app came across my IG feed, I had to bite. I mean what’s not to love about more mindfulness, right? So I’ve been using it for the past eight days, and here’s my thoughts on their free version. The app is called Shine-Daily Self-Care and here’s what their logo looks like (so cute!)! First, let’s go over how it works:

1. Shine sends you daily messages (even via text if you don’t want to do it through the app) including two articles on a mental health topic and a free mindfulness track. This happens during the weekdays.
2. Everyday, including weekends, it has you check in by cultivating gratitude (they ask what are you grateful for today) and setting a daily wellness goal (what are you doing to feel good today) and you message back your responses.
3. It tracks how many days in a row you check in!
4. It sends you a reminder for your next check in so you don’t forget.

So here’s what I love about the app:

• The text style is fun and easy to use, I like that I get to actually reply.
• I appreciate that the check ins promote gratitude and setting a wellness goal daily.
• It’s nice to have more materials on weekdays when I am stressed the most
• I value that they tackle different areas explicitly (like motivation or focus) and do all the work for me
• It’s aesthetically pleasing
• The check in reminders are nice
• I have not repeated any materials yet
• They have information about crisis hotlines and calling 911 in an emergency

Here’s what I’m on the fence about for Shine:

• Sometimes their mindfulness tracks seem more like audio lessons, which is fine but it’s definitely not pure mindfulness every time
• The articles are a little long to read, so it takes a while on the weekdays to read all of the materials while other apps are quicker
• I can’t tell how much of their content was developed by mental health professionals, or at least what’s empirically backed in the materials they provide.

Overall though, I really like Shine. It’s fun, simple to use, and an easy way to help make mental health a priority. They provide good content, and large amounts of it (especially for a free version). I definitely will consider recommending it to clients in the future to help give them options in mental health apps! Was this helpful for you guys? Would you like it if I did this kind of thing more? What are your favorite apps to recommend to clients? Have you used Shine before and what are your thoughts? Let me know about it all in the comments!

The Beginning of the End

This was my last week at my clinical internship. And I was so sad to go. (Though by some miracle did not cry… until the next day anyways). We only have 30 days left until the end of school.

I have grown so much this year. I know my preferred modalities and orientations (and more importantly how to implement them). I know my therapeutic style—definitely am not a blank slate kinda girl, if you’re my client my reactions will be genuine (although not extreme). I know how and when to safety plan. I learned how to always have a plan and to never expect to use it. I discovered that my intuition was right; I want to work with high schoolers.

I cannot tell you how grateful I am for my supervisor and all of the work that he put into the program this year for us and the kids. He guided me and directed me and supported me when I wasn’t sure how to support myself. He was a constant reminder of God’s grace, compassion, and love; he never let me forget that God is in the room with the students and I, and that I need to take care of myself and take time to soak up life’s experiences.

This was my first supervisor. My first clients. My first office. Arguable my first time ending something 100% well and not an emotional wreck. I have been beyond blessed by everyone and everything this year. I will never forget them or that place.

As I look to the future I am amazed and thankful. This was a formative year for me. At the beginning of the year when I saw my first client I was dumbfounded. I thought, holy crap, I am actually a counselor now, this is insane! But now I feel that I’ve really started to grow into that. I am a counselor. And a good one at that (at least, according to supervisor and student feedback–definitely have a lot to learn and have made mistakes along the way!). But it feels great to say that and to mean it and to own it and incorporate it into a professional identity.

I know I was lucky this year, not everybody has such positive first experiences with their internships. I hope that everyone has been able to take away some of the same levels of confidence and lessons. Let me know in the comments below!

Self Care Question

When thinking about your own experience and practices in self-care, do you think that self-care and more of a mindset that you carry into each day and moment, or do you think it is a series of intentional activities that you build into your routine?

This came up in my core group at class last night, and I’m wondering what you guys think! Personally, I’ve always leaned towards the second definition, but I’m hoping to adjust my mindset to the first!

We should be striving to make every part of every day something that helps us grow, makes us more capable, defines our sense of self, or makes us able to accept and appreciate our lives for what they are.

For any fellow Christians out there, I’m trying to take an approach that goes along with the notion of praying without ceasing. I constantly try and do breath prayers throughout the day, and I think approaching self care in a similar way (which of course for me incorporates prayer) will help me take it to the next level, so to speak.

What do you guys thinks?

Finals Are Over (Finally)

I have been neglecting to write on this because I have been trying to recover from the exhaustion of it all and process. See that’s the thing with semester graduate programs: finals lasts from the beginning of November until nearly halfway through December. Somehow it’s simultaneously the most drawn out and never ending thing and the quickest thing ever because classes are finishing left and right. To be totally honest it sucks, and I have a newfound appreciation for my desire to go to a quarter school for undergrad. 

But anyways, I feel like this semester has tested me and stretched me beyond my typical comfort zone. In other areas I kinda feel like I have stopped making progress or ever regressed a little. Life’s weird that way: if you aren’t constantly working on something almost always you immediately start to slip back. I’d like to say that after almost a week of processing that I’m able to articulate those areas of growth eloquently, but I’m afraid that I simply can’t right now and so a rough snapshot will have to do. 

Here’s what I think I’m doing well:

1. I feel like I have grown in my confidence of my knowledge. This is something that I worked a lot on last year and have been continuing to work on. I’m tired of trying to be polite and let people save face when they are factually incorrect, and I am tired of downplaying my own intelligence for fear of people thinking me an insufferable know it all (I hope you caught the Harry Potter reference there). In addition, I feel that grad school as been the best Match for me academically in a very long time. It’s the perfect amount of stimulating and challenging without making me want to slam my head against the desk. And my grades so far have reflected this; I am expecting mostly A’s with a few B’s for my final grades. 
2. In regards to public speaking I’ve done better and worse, and when I’ve done worse it hasn’t been as difficult to cope with as I feared. Still not a major fan of public speaking, but I’m getting better at it and at facing my mistakes with grace and dignity. Literally never thought that I would be writing this, by the way. 
3. I have shown myself that I can work and go to school at the same time. I feel very much like an adult in this and it has been a good motivator and reminder that I am a capable human being who can manage life decently. 

Now for what I need to work on. Note I’m including this for several reasons: (1) to give a realistic picture of my experience so far, (2) self motivation by naming areas of improvement, and (3) hopefully some sense of accountability for actually getting better in these areas. 

1. Physical care. Major oops on this one (and I thought this was going to be the easiest). My anxiety has been worse than it was before school. I struggle to exercise regularly. My eating habits are all over the place. And sleep? That’s just a myth non-students talk about. 
2. My social life. I think this has declined largely in response to my poor self care habits. I always have so much homework to do, and when I finally have free time all I want to do is sleep. It’s kinda pathetic and I miss all my friends. I think that this is something that I can build into my self care routine/habits. 
3. Spending time with God (namely sermons and prayer). Due to the stress caused by my sense of “having no time” my self care and time with God have really gone down. Truthfully this is the aspect of self care that makes the most difference so it’s kinda huge to have been slacking here. Once again, going to have to build it into my self care habits/routine. 

How do I plan to combat this? As much as it pains me to say, I genuinely think that I need to build routines and habits that I stick to. It’ll be hard but hopefully worth it if I can follow through. So basically everything that I’m struggling with can be summed up by two words: self care. It’s funny how the thing I thought would be the easiest has been where I’ve struggled the most. Like I said, if you’re not moving forwards you’re moving backwards. Note: I have been spending a lot of time in the woods this week, and that seems to help. I might keep on trying to do this. 

Truthfully I’m terrified at the idea of making a self care routine. I don’t like the idea of every day of my life being the same thing–monotony scares me. But I think it’s genuinely what I need for this season. Especially with the semester that’s coming up. This semester felt more like practice, I was looking through my syllabi today and damn. Next semester looks difficult as hell. Seriously guys, please pray for me. I’m definitely going to work ahead so that I have a fighting chance come January. Hmmm… speaking of which, I think I just came up with the idea for my next post. Stay tuned! 

Self Care

Something that I discovered the beauty of through my own time in counseling in high school is self care. Self care is so so so important. And everybody already does it to some extent (although they may not call it that). 

Those lazy things you like to do to relax and unwind? Self care. Those routines you have in place to maintain healthy exercise and eating habits? Self care. That time you spend creating art or music or writing or whatever? Self care. Anything you do that tends to your physical, mental/emotional, and spiritual wellbeing can be considered self care. 

The key is to set up a routine that works best for you. I’ve found it most helpful to have a huge list to pull on, just in case you aren’t in the mood for what you planned for. That being said it’s always good to have routines too. For example, some of my self care items I can do whenever I have free time or scheduled self care time. Others have set times every week and accountability in place to make sure that they get done. 

Here are some of my self care habits if you need some inspiration: 

• Meditations to help me fall asleep (the app Stop, Breathe, & Think is AMAZING) 
• Draw in my sketch book 
• Make crafts or new foods from scratch 
• Worry journal 
• Netflix and take out nights with friends (or my mom) 
• Spend time with my dog 
• Yoga (I love the app Down Dog) 
• Hammocking 
• Going for a walk/drive 
• Sharing prayer requests with close friends weekly 
• Working out with my exercise buddy every Monday 
• Journaling/writing 
• Vacations/trips when possible (camping, Disneyland, drives to Canada) 
• Taking a nap 
• Stargazing 
• baths (bubbles, epsome salts, essential oils, lavender candles, the whole nine yards) 
• Reading a non-school related book 
• Coffee/food with a friend, family member, or mentor 
• Going to church on Sunday evenings 

Feeling really stressed, down, or like your life is falling apart? Take your list of self care items and pick a day on your calendar to have a self care day. Plan it out from start to finish; be intentional, don’t rush, and take care of yourself so you can be at your best. After all, when we are our best selves we do our best work and can best help others. 

So what are your self care habits? What are some things you’ve been meaning to include but haven’t gotten around to incorporating into your daily routine yet? Let me know in the comments!