I’ll be honest: moving halfway across the country was not easy. As many of you may know from my introduction post, I grew up in Connecticut and went to college right outside of Manhattan. While I was away from home at college, I was still close enough to go home on the weekends.
Moving to Springfield to work here at MTC has turned out to be one of the best decisions I could have ever made, but definitely one of the hardest. I miss my family, friends, and pets back on the East Coast daily, and I know they miss me too.
However, this has been an amazing learning experience for me in so many ways. Here are a few things I’ve learned about myself in my short time out here:
I’m a lot more independent than I thought I was! Going places alone used to be a little scary for me, but since I’ve been living on my own in a new place, I’ve found the joy in it. Taking myself out to dinner, seeing a movie by myself, or even going to a museum alone have been weekend activities I enjoy doing with me, myself, and I.
The importance of self care. In the past few months, I’ve really learned what self care is and is not for me. It’s made a big difference both with dealing with the emotional toll my work can take on me at times, and the emotional toll being so far away from my support system can take.
Although I’m far away from my support system, FaceTime, social media, and phone calls are wonderful things! I talk to my parents on the phone a few nights a week, and sometimes we FaceTime and they hold the phone up to each of the dogs and cats so I can see them. Although it’s not the same as being there, it really does help a lot to be able to so easily connect with my family and friends.
I’m enjoying figuring my new life in Illinois out, and not a second goes by where I regret my decision. I’m super grateful to the team at MTC for being so amazing and making my transition so smooth, as well as the wonderful families I serve at MTC. And not to leave out my incredible parents, who supported me through this journey — you guys are the best!
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you around MTC!
Hi again! I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about something near and dear to my heart: the importance of self care when working in a helping profession.
I knew when I decided to become a music therapy major that it wouldn’t always be easy for so many reasons, but I don’t think I really came to fully understand that until now, as a professional. I knew I would be having difficult discussions with clients and helping them through difficult times in their lives, but the emotional toll of what that would be like didn’t hit me until I began working in the field.
One of my main contract locations is a pediatric behavioral health facility. I work with people ages from 5 to 18 with a broad range of psychiatric and behavioral disorders. I love working with this population, but it can be very emotionally challenging at times.
Coupled with the fact that I have other contracts and a caseload of clients and students at MTC, I can feel pretty exhausted — physically and emotionally — at the end of the week. This is where self care comes in.
When I first began working, and even when I first began internship, I thought I understood the importance of self care. I made sure to do things to take care of myself and treat myself with kindness. Quickly, though, I realized that the things I thought were self care just weren’t working for me. Watching Netflix is great, but doing it for an entire weekend because you think it’s ‘what you need for self care’ isn’t always the answer.
For me, self care has become taking a long walk in the evening and stopping to pet dogs. It’s become cooking a good, healthy, nourishing meal for myself to power my body and brain. It’s forgiving myself when I make a mistake. It’s become minimizing electronic use at night to get a good, solid night’s sleep. It’s making sure I drink enough water.
It’s even become throughly cleaning my apartment or my car out on a Sunday afternoon to have a fresh start for the week. It’s also become finding a creative outlet outside of work — I’m really looking forward to joining the Capitol Area Concert Band when they resume rehearsals in August!
Self care looks different for everyone, and for some, a weekend of laying on the couch watching Netflix might be exactly what you need. I encourage you to take a closer look at your current self care routine and examine what’s working and what might not be. Self care isn’t selfish, and it’s an important part of being a human in today’s fast paced world.
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you do something nice for yourself this week!
Hi everyone! My name is Molly Robitaille and I am so excited to join the wonderful team here at Music Therapy Connections as a new music therapist. For this post, I wanted to share a little about myself.
I am fresh out of college and my music therapy internship. I attended Molloy College on Long Island, New York and completed my music therapy internship during senior year in a local school district.
I just moved to Springfield from Connecticut! Although I went to college in New York, I grew up in Northwest Connecticut. This was a big change for me, but I am very excited to be doing what I love and surrounded by such awesome people.
I am primarily an oboist, though I also play the piano, guitar, saxophone, and ukulele in addition to singing.
I am thrilled to be here! This job is a dream come true for me, and I am so excited to help my students and clients reach their full potential through the power of music.
Thanks for taking the time to get to know a little bit about me! I look forward to contributing to the MTC blog more in the future, as well as getting to know all of the families that MTC serves.
This application is a great way for adults with special needs or older adults to work on sequencing, and/or cognitive and memory skills. The song’s natural flow and built in verse structure is an effective way to prompt clients to remember the order of objects sung about, and the fun melody keeps everyone anticipating what they are about to sing about next!
Possible Goals Addressed:
Sequencing
Maintaining memory skills
Music Used:
Seeger, P. & Hays, L. (1950). If I had a hammer. [recorded by The Weavers] On Banks of Marble [LP]. Hootenanny Records.
Materials needed: none
Application: The music therapist will sing the song “If I Had a Hammer” by Peter, Paul and Mary. The music therapist will sing the song once more and will prompt the clients to fill in the blanks for ‘hammer’, ‘bell’ and ‘song’. “If I had a___”. The therapist can also introduce hand motions to provide additional cognitive/motor integration during the application.
Lyrics
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning I’d hammer in the evening, All over this land.
I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out a warning, I’d hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters, All over this land.
If I had a bell, I’d ring it in the morning, I’d ring it in the evening, All over this land.
I’d ring out danger, I’d ring out a warning I’d ring out love between my brothers and my sisters, All over this land.
If I had a song, I’d sing it in the morning, I’d sing it in the evening, All over this land.
I’d sing out danger, I’d sing out a warning I’d sing out love between my brothers and my sisters, All over this land.
Well I got a hammer, And I got a bell, And I got a song to sing, all over this land.
It’s the hammer of Justice, It’s the bell of Freedom, It’s the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters, All over this land.
It’s the hammer of Justice, It’s the bell of Freedom, It’s the song about Love between my brothers and my sisters, All over this land.
This week, the Chicago Tribune published an article highlighting the benefits of music therapy for individuals with dementia.
In the article, McCoppin (2018), not only provided an overview of music’s effectiveness with individuals affected by Alzheimer’s Disease, but also introduced a current study led by neurologist, Dr. Borna Bonakdarpour, which studied the impact of music therapy with nursing home residents affected by various forms of dementia, including its effect on improvements in cognition, conversation and relationships.
With the rise of dementia diagnosed in older adults, this article comes at a critical time where more and more people are seeking out progressive treatment options for their loved ones who have been declining in responsiveness to outside stimulation, orientation to their environment, and connection with close ones.
As a music therapist who regularly works with older adults with dementia, I see the toll that dementia takes on residents. However, I view it as a privilege to facilitate a supportive environment where familiar songs bring a sense of normalcy and social connection to the residents’ day.
With the knowledge base expanding in regards to the benefits of music for older adults, it is also important to know that special consideration and sensitivity must be applied when using music therapeutically. Not all music and music activities are suitable for older adults with dementia, as it is important to take into consideration the following:
cultural background of clients
creating a supportive environment to handle sensitive topics of discussion or unexpected emotional reactions that may arise
the physical, psycho-social, and sensory status of each individual.
Want to learn more? Check out the article for yourself, or take a look at our current collection of resources on music therapy and older adults.
This past weekend, many of my music therapy colleagues celebrated the milestone of completing all academic coursework, and many are on the way towards starting internship soon.
As I reflect back on the different life transitions in my music therapy career, I can’t believe that it’s already been a year since I finished these milestones! A lot has changed since entering the “real world,” yet, I still see how some things I learned in internship continue to be relevant in my day to day as a working professional.
For me, internship was a season of self care, capacity stretching, and professional growth. These things have all stuck with me, and continue to be relevant in my work at Music Therapy Connections.
Self Care – With new assignments and experiences each week, internship is very fast paced. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed at all the new responsibilities, but through regularly journaling about my day, my reactions, and the struggles that I encountered, I began to see how important it was to be in tune with my inner thoughts and actively seek opportunities to cope with stressful situations in a healthy way.
For me, self care looks like setting time aside in my schedule or in my commute to mentally and emotionally transition from home life to work life. I also like to do things that remind me that my identity and purpose isn’t defined solely through music therapy, such as spend time to deepen my relationship with my family and friends, as well as exercise.
Capacity Stretching – As a student, you are usually doing music therapy once a week, and preparing and doing documentation for that one session for a couple of days. In internship, you are typically leading multiple sessions a day for five days a week, and decreasing prep and documentation time significantly.
While growth in capacity doesn’t happen overnight, it is something that is essential in the transition from internship to working life. Not only is it about growing capacity, but it’s also about becoming more comfortable with increasing efficiency with planning time. This is definitely something that I am still growing in, especially since I know things will only get busier!
Professional Growth – I love how internship not only prepares you to do music therapy, but to also interact and work with other professionals and other individuals who support your clients. Establishing effective work and professional habits and communicating with others is definitely a skill that I use every day to talk with parents, support workers, future contracts, and to the public.
That being said, there are some things from internship that I’ve since learned were specific to my internship season.
Constant accountability – Every week in my internship, I had time devoted to meeting with my supervisors to discuss any issues and to help me stay on track. Now that I am working, it is important that I take ownership of my work and take steps to develop areas in need even when I don’t have a supervisor to keep me accountable.
Access to Information – As an intern, I took advantage of my student status and utilized my school library’s database of research articles on a weekly basis. Now that I’ve officially graduated, I miss no longer having that access through my student account. I guess part of working in the real world is about letting go of student perks, eventually…
That’s all my post-internship thoughts for now.
Shout out to all the new interns, current interns, and post-interns who are all walking this music therapy journey with me! If you have any internship stories, I’d love to hear them in the comments below!
