Was it really that bad? Well, evidently it was…
When I first started school for my Music Therapy degree I learned that we would be working with partners to conduct actual sessions with actual clients right away. Teams of two music therapy students were put together to go do assigned sessions for what was called pre-clinicals. I was paired with another student who was in my class and new to the therapy experience. My partner was a young girl close to the age of my younger daughter.
We were assigned an adult senior living facility. We were given a little bit of information such as how many would be in the group, what kind of room we would have, what time to arrive and how long the session would be. My partner and I met together to decide what our session would look like. We chose songs that we thought would be appropriate for the age group we would be working with. We talked about different activities that we felt might work and tried to figure out how long each activity would take.
Neither of us had ever done a session before and we knew the director of our program would be observing us so our stress level was pretty high. We were both nervous yet excited to see how this thing called music therapy would work with this group of people. We had heard and we had read of positive outcomes that others had received working with this population.
We were both nervous yet excited to see how this thing called music therapy would work with this group of people.
We got there and were taken to the room where we would have the session. The nurse seemed to be excited that we were there and said that the patients were looking forward to our class that night. As we set up our CD player and organized our instruments that we had borrowed from the music therapy lab we talked over who would do what during the session. My partner had a baritone uke and began to tune it as neither of us had taken a guitar class and couldn’t play the guitar. She however said she could play the uke. I had learned to play a soprano uke over 20 years prior when my husband had been assigned to Army duty in Honolulu Hawaii during the Vietnam War. While we lived there for 2 years I took Hula lessons and also took ukulele lessons at a park and rec kind of class. My partner asked if I knew how to tune it, so I told her the way I was taught, I sang four notes and sang along as she played one string at a time…. my dog has fleas, I couldn’t even tell her what notes they were, I just sang the little tune I had been taught on the beaches of Waikiki those many years before. As she struggled to make things match she looked very confused and said, no that’s not right. I insisted it was the way I was taught to do it. After, which seemed like a very long time she said something like “the strings on the uke (baritone) were the same 4 notes of 4 of the 6 strings on the guitar. She knew more than I did so after we were so frustrated with the tuning and with each other we put the uke away and just used our voices.
We set up chairs and the people started coming in, some walking and some with canes and others in wheelchairs. They were all pleasant and seemed ready to start. We did start with a hello song and went around the group shaking hands with each client. Then, not very smoothly, we transitioned to our first activity, kind of fumbling through it. As we started to put a CD on, for some reason it didn’t work and it took some time to make it work right. While one of us was struggling with the CD player the other tried to get a conversation going trying to get to know the clients. By this time I am sure they had had enough of us. I know I surely had enough and couldn’t wait to be through with what we had prepared. I thought we had planned so thoroughly, apparently I was wrong.
By this time I am sure they had had enough of us. I now I surely had enough…
My partner and I met with the director later that week so she could talk to us and critique what she observed. All students met with the director so I wasn’t too concerned. I didn’t know what to expect but we really were raked over the coals about what a poor job we did. Every detail and flaw was magnified. When we left her office my partner started to cry and I was mad. I told her that I didn’t feel that we had been taught enough yet to go out and do a session on our own. I felt that we should have been able to observe a session in person first to be able to see what it really looked like. Now remember, my partner was maybe 20 years old and I was in my mid 40’s, older than the director, and I wasn’t used to being scolded like that. I was the one who usually did the scolding, by this point in my life I had successfully engaged in 5 children worth of scolding. I got over the embarrassment and my partner stopped crying and we were both determined to prove the director wrong. We would show her that we would make good Music Therapists. We both dedicated much time and effort in each session we did. Toward the end of the semester the director surprised us again with a visit and at our next meeting she was pleased with the progress we had made.
Each semester we were given a new population to work with to give us an idea of what opportunities would be available to us after graduation. It was funny because after each preclinical I had decided the population I had just worked with was my favorite. I think I just loved it all. I was able to narrow it down to what I felt most comfortable with by my senior year and was able to pursue working with children.
I look back at that first experience and cringe a bit. The director was right, I was terrible but the best part was that I did gain more confidence, skills and ability to structure a session. In fact, I have learned to love each and every session I do. Being a part of providing some improvement to someone’s quality of life, or enjoyment for the moment or the day is rewarding. I am so glad that I didn’t give up. Sometimes we might feel that it is easier to just stop because it seems too difficult. Pushing through makes the reward so much greater.
