Fast and furious

That's how my life feels at the moment. I kind of thought after the full-on whirlwind that was first semester at uni, that this semester would be pretty laid back and cruisey. HOW WRONG WAS I?!!! I don't even know where to start, or even how interested you are, so let me give you some dot points...

• Placement is FAB. I have three clients (four actually, but one is a repeated no-show and apparently that's fairly standard in public mental health) and hopefully a new one next week. We are supposed to treat anxiety and depression but of course no-one is that simple so I have a multitude of complex clients and I'm learning SO much. I love it.

• I now have a supervisor for my research project! Yay! Now I just need to finalise my research topic. hmmm... My interest is in maternal and infant mental health and my topic is either going to be evaluating a mindfulness-based treatment for pregnant women to reduce risk of PND, or to evaluate a mental health training program for midwives. If it's the latter, I will design and deliver the training, as well as evaluate it. If it's the first option (my preference), the group is already set to go and I'll just need to help with recruitment and do all the evaluations. But the most important bit is finding a supervisor and I LOVE my supervisor. She's about my age (perhaps a bit younger since I'm an old bag), her interests are very much in line with mine, she has a little 2.5yo daughter and she's really lovely. So I don't really care what the topic ends up being, I think I'll really like working with her.

• I have one actual uni subject this semester and the first class was yesterday. Give me strength! After being on placement, it was extraordinarily painful to sit back in a classroom and listen to a dry 3-hour lecture. Bleuch. Not to mention having to think about doing assignments again. I'm dry-wretching at the very thought of it. No more about that. Thinking about when I'm going to fit it in raises my blood pressure.
  

• Last but not least, I put my name down to do some tutoring work for 1st year students (anyone can handle first years, right?). I'm not talking one-on-one tutoring, but running the actual first-year tutorials. Anyway, they had too many people apply so I missed out on a spot... never mind. But the next minute, I got an email asking if I'm still free and would I mind taking a few third year tutorials. What?? Third year?? I did third year about 20 years ago and I'm pretty sure I didn't do very well at it THEN!! So I said I could only do Thursdays, thinking that would pretty much count me out. She said FINE, she's got a class that runs on Thursdays and would it be ok if she puts my name down for a few of them. Sure, I said. WELL... I have now been allocated the whole three tutorials each Thursday and I think I'm doing this for the entire semester..?? Fark! The woman who hired me assures me I don't need to actually know the stuff to run a tutorial. THIS IS GOOD NEWS!! So I'm meeting with the head teacher tomorrow to get all my reading material and do my paperwork and I'm going to have to start studying up on that before they feed me to the third years next week. eek!! The best part is it's reasonable money and I could use some reasonable money.

Umm.... I think that's it for uni stuff. I have lots more updates though, so perhaps I'll hit submit now and come back with other stuff later. :)