9:31 p.m. - September 18, 2002
the ear hears
Just wondering if anyone knows if there is a "world cup dada art." Apparently, there is--or someone thinks there is, because someone found my page that way. This amuses me for some insane reason...

Anyhow, not too much exciting happened today, except for the fact that we had out first group counseling session today--we had a rather large group--eight people (six adults with hearing loss and two spouses). Terrific. Since I was leading the session today, I was a bit nervous when it all started, but after a while, I realized there wasn't anything to be afraid of, particularly since the people were so nice and had such wonderful senses of humor. And they were all too willing to talk amongst themselves, which made it all even more wonderful.

However, one of my classmates has intense stage fright--I've never seen it this bad. She dreads it, she wants to run and cry--she said she nearly did. And I'm trying to tell her that it's not that bad: she comes off as sounding educated and nice, she even sounds confident, which is important when you're trying to teach people about hearing aids. She has the same problem when we see a client for an audiological evaluation (she and I are partners) and she's always in terror when we're about to get the client. And the funny thing is: she asks more questions than I do when we're taking case histories or completing tests.

I don't know. She wonders (so do I) if she's in the wrong major. I'm actually surprised that she made it this far, especially with her undergraduate experience with speech-pathology...or maybe perhaps her experience in speech-pathology was lacking? Mine was pretty thorough: we had our own clients, had to plan sessions, talk, talk, talk, ask questions (and I also had an audiology caseload too, even though it was very light...)

I think she has potential, but if she keeps feeling uncomfortable with patients, talking about hearing loss or even meeting new people, she needs to find something else new to do. I think she'd be a good audiologist, because she really is focused and can learn things well--even though she says she is frustrated about it all. She said she feels like she isn't picking things up as quickly as others.

I told her that it takes time, and maybe some other people may have learned some of the material in their undergrad (or that maybe there was more emphasis placed upon those concepts in an undergrad program), and that for me, I grew up knowing a lot of the terminology and some of the aspects we're covering. Not the anatomy, though....

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