Welcome to the blog that is my summary/rant about my
experience through grad school (the second time around). The title of this blog
is the best summary I can give to the experience….. 3 year nightmare. OK, so this last year hasn’t
been as bad because I was just working and didn’t have to go to class but we
still had assignments to turn in. I am beyond ready to have my life back.
[And just to explain what I do… I am a Licensed Specialist
in School Psychology. I test students for learning disabilities, behavior
disorders, Autism, etc. I can also provide counseling services but that’s not
my fave. There’s a lot more to this job but that’s the easiest way I can
describe it. Similar to a diagnostician but we can do more (sorry diag
friends).]
Some days I honestly am not sure what I was thinking when I
signed on to do this. I wanted something more than the job that I had and the
impression central office was giving at that time was that jobs there were
scarce and wouldn’t be available for a long time. Then there’s the total
misrepresentation that Trinity gives about how much its program costs. “With
tuition breaks and being paid for working through the program it’s essentially
FREE!” Not hardly! Now, if you didn’t need the money you were getting paid for
working to actually live and could allocate it back to tuition then it might
have been closer to free. But who lives
in that world? Certainly not me. My
first master’s program (@ UT) was part time and that went decently well and was
relatively easy…. I quickly found out that part time school and working full
time is VERY different than full time school and working almost full time.
I also have some significant complaints about how some of
the classes were structured and run. If I’m paying that much money for classes
I shouldn’t have to learn how to do something on the job. This has frequently
been the case. I’ll stop there and spare you on my specific complaining because
it’s a lot of “you had to be part of it to really understand” kinds of things.
Now all that belly aching aside… I do enjoy my job. It can
be very busy and very stressful but the days fly by because of that. The
Masters in Special Ed and all my experience definitely helps out with this job
but it also gets me in trouble, too, as I have been told I over step the
parameters of my current job. I also met some very good friends that I know I
will consult with about LSSP stuff for the rest of my life. My LSSP besties
call each other the three thirds. The three of us combined make one fantastic
LSSP. That may be the biggest positive to this whole thing… that I got to work
with some tremendous LSSP’s that I consider friends as well as colleagues.
A lot of life altering things happened over the three years
of this program. I got married! I was pregnant for most of my second year
(pregnant lady on campus... talk about an easy way to scare undergrads). Had a
baby. And lost my mom. I got teary as I typed that last sentence. That is
actually one of the reasons I chose not to walk in the graduation ceremony. My
mom is the only one in my family who would have genuinely wanted to be there.
And I think sitting there and thinking about that would make me a mess! And I
don’t want to make the rest of my family sit through my 4th
graduation either.
So I started this whole thing under the premise of “it’s
only 3 years of my life.” You can do anything for just 3 years right??? Well, I
suppose that is correct. I did survive. And I have no better summary for those 3
years of school than “thank goodness it’s over.” AND I better get a job! Speaking
of which, keep your fingers crossed that this blog is followed with one within
the next month of how I actually got a job… to be continued.
