quote of the week {jan 30 - feb 5}

Will there always be a quote of the week? Doubtful. But it's such a catchy title.

This image was shown in class as a stimulus example for detecting covert facial recognition in a patient with prosopagnosia (as an aside, the covert recognition piece is fascinating...electrodermal skin conductance is greater when shown faces that they should recognize than when shown faces they shouldn’t recognize):
We were asked who each of these individuals are.
For the third, there was an overwhelming response of "Baba Wawa."
Professor (paraphrased): Mm, hm, Baba Wawa. Oh, I guess it's not very nice for a room full of SLPs to be saying that.

Hilarious.

clinic {spring 2011}

I don't know if I ever wrote about my clinic assignments last semester. I really appreciate the way CU sets up students' introduction to clinic: first years are paired with second years for the first semester. It eases a lot of anxiety (for me, at least) and is a very good learning opportunity. I had an elementary-aged literacy client, and a young adult stuttering client. Two very good experiences.

For your second semester, students (mostly) remain with their fall clients plus get several new ones. My client who stutters chose to discontinue therapy, so I lost that one, but still have the other. So, my assignments:

• As mentioned, an elementary-aged literacy client. I like this kiddo a lot. I am trying to change some of the session philosophy this semester because I felt that this client's focus was too much on games and prizes, and I want it to be on working hard to reach the goal of being able to discontinue therapy. This is difficult, but I believe it will be the most beneficial, and this client is reaching the age where it is even more important that reading/writing skills are solidified. Wish me luck!
• Project Learn. This is one of the infamous assignments at our clinic. It often causes a lot of grumbling among us graduate student clinicians. The set-up is that we go into three public school-based preschools in Denver one morning per week and work on the literacy/pre-literacy skills of vocabulary, phonemic or phonological awareness, and narrative. We are in teams of four and each have 3-4 kids assigned to us in each classroom. I am so not a fan of early mornings or commutes; there can be a lot of prep time and material making for three classrooms; it is super difficult to take data on individual kids when you have a group of them you are responsible for; and overall, these mornings are somewhat chaotic and very tiring. But the kiddos are pretty cute, and I think this will be a good experience. One interesting aspect of my assignment is that we were assigned one classroom of English Language Learners (who all speak Spanish). Yeah, I don't know any Spanish...unless I want to tell them my grandpa has a pick-up. These kids are super cute and the most behaved class of my three (sadly, they're probably terrified of this sudden change to English instruction for 40 minutes a week), but I feel terrible that they get excited to talk to me, and I have no idea what they are saying! Again, wish me luck! I am also accepting wishes for good travel weather and safe commutes.
• R-tic. I and my co-clinician have an elementary-aged client who has trouble producing the "r" and the "sh" sounds. I wasn't originally assigned this, but one of my good friends was assigned a client in this, and she was generous enough to let me join her as a co-clinician. I am really grateful for this opportunity because I have no prior experience treating articulation disorders, and I'm glad to start getting experience with it now since I would be likely to see this often in an elementary school setting.
  
• Stuttering Support Group. I'm really excited about this assignment. It's a support group for adults who stutter and a safe place to practice techniques. This is a half-semester assignment, and I don't start it until March, so I don't have much to say about it yet.
• LLD Dx. This is the one assignment I really, really wanted. Our team of five does diagnostics for language and learning disabilities for clients aged 8-ish to adult. Most often clients request this diagnostic because of trouble in school, problems reading, and concerns of dyslexia. We have not seen a client yet, so I am still really intimidated, but I think this will be an awesome learning experience. Diagnostics are intense -- 6 hours of testing divided between two days. I am also really excited about my team members.

There you have it. My clinic schedule right now is pretty great because I am done by Tuesday. Tuesday itself is a total bear with clinic straight through from 7am-6pm, and it is really exhausting, so I am glad I don't also have classes on Tuesdays. Haha, I don't even know yet how exhausting Tuesdays will really be since we haven't had a diagnostic client yet. Wow. I'll see if I am still standing at the end of the day next Tuesday (which will be tiring to the extreme since we have to make up a 3-hour class that evening...ug).

this weekend i...

• watched the movie Red for free at a theater on campus.
• watched CU beat Oklahoma State live for $3, making their record in the conference 3-0! Two of those wins were against nationally ranked teams and one was against a team that has been getting votes in the polls. Man, am I going to miss Big 12 basketball after this year!
• baked bierocks.
• watched the film The Bridge for free on hulu. It was quite sad. Then I did some reading about suicides at the Golden Gate Bridge. More sad. Next up, I will read the follow-up study "Where Are They Now?" about 515 individuals who attempted suicide from the bridge but were restrained. I am hopeful that it will be less sad since I read elsewhere that the percentage of people who were stopped and later committed suicide somewhere else is low.
• wrote my first paper of the semester...at least the first draft.
• actually -- surprisingly -- already finished my reading for my first class this coming week.
• got free stuff at the grocery store: a clementine (one of our stores very often offers whole clementines as samples), a bottle of Kraft salad dressing with a coupon, two cans of Del Monte reduced sodium sweet peas with a coupon, and a nearly-free (50 cents) package of Dole salad greens.
• started our colony (?) of Triops [hopefully] hatching.
• went out with B's lab to a pub, where my Smithwick's was paid for and I ate delicious Guinness-and-Bass-battered onion rings, BBQ pork sliders, and pub chips.

And what's that you say? The weekend isn't even over yet?! I have tomorrow off? Thank goodness. I am so ready for a break from school. :)

Ph.DJ

If the epic event from last year's department holiday party was the "P.R. long pour," the epic event from this year's was one of our professors playing us music that he produced. I was pretty impressed. It was loud in there, but I believe he said he has produced three albums? And one of the songs he played for us tonight should be coming out on iTunes in the spring? Sweet.

Of course, others at the party might have different opinions about what the epic moment of the night was...like maybe playing Flip Cup with your professors or hearing the chair of your department chant "P-Ram! P-Ram! P-Ram!" over the microphone or watching your professors limbo.

Oh, SLHS, I do love you...when I'm not having to do work for you. Haha!

Sure, Wednesday evening may not have been the ideal time for a party, but honestly, it was really, really nice to have a break from all of the studying right in the midst of everything.

not good.

I believe our latest mouse has somehow managed to trap himself under the cabinets in our kitchen. How he got in and is not able to get out is a mystery. But we keep hearing him scratch about. Ug. That is a much worse problem than having to avoid a mouse dead in a trap. 1. I feel sorry for the guy if he is trapped and is going to starve to death. 2. It's going to smell awesome.

a good day.

It was hard to wake up this morning. Really hard. I'm not quite sure why since, prior to last night, I was getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night. Probably the short night and some general grumpiness about a certain assignment I stayed up late working on plus my long, packed day ahead made it difficult. Then, not 20 minutes after our first break in class, I was dragging. DRAGGING. The eyelids were getting heavy. Class ended early, which was a nice treat. I had a training session during my 30-minute lunch break that lasted into my first 30 minutes of work, so I missed out on that $5. 2.5 hours and it was quitting time! Off to another meeting. But. BUT. This is where the day got good. I had my first formal clinical evaluation with one of my supervisors, and it went so well! I was super pleased. It seriously put me in such a good mood. Then the second version of our clinic schedule (what clinic assignments / clients we'll have) for the spring went up and...luckily, none of the assignments I was really excited about changed! (and neither did any of the others) I actually left the building for the day feeling really good.

When I got home I saw a sweet, thoughtful note from Brian about how we have another mouse (boo) and he had reset the traps and wanted to warn me not to get tangled up in them (I am super notorious for kicking any random thing on the floor and I definitely tripped the traps last time they were out).

rocky mountain mcc relief sale

As mentioned previously, in October, we went to the Rocky Mountain MCC Relief Sale with our friends Emily and Adam. Emily grew up going to the sale, and we were stoked that they invited us to go. We were able to get a head start on the drive to Rocky Ford on Friday night by traveling to Colorado Springs and staying overnight at Emily's family's beautiful house there. We also got the privilege of seeing their newly-delivered wedding photos that night. Gorgeous!

Saturday morning after breakfast at Panera, we drove the rest of the way to Rocky Ford -- a town that reminded me a lot of towns in western KS. Once there, I immediately started honing in on KS-plated cars and wondering how many people we would see that we knew. We saw maybe 10 people we knew? Cool. The CO sale had many similar elements to the KS sale but on a smaller scale. I enjoyed looking at the silent auction items, the quilts, and the regular auction items. I believe this sale's signature item is its apple butter, made fresh there in the morning and canned right before your eyes before you buy it. I'm telling you, folks, this apple butter is crazy delicious.

Their big meal is a barbecued chicken meal with cole slaw, a dinner roll, and a brownie. Very yummy. The meal is in a building about six blocks away, and they offer a tractor-pulled wagon ride to it. Here we are on the wagon.


After we walked back from lunch, we browsed the Ten Thousand Villages shop and over by it I spotted for the first time a sign advertising New Year's Cookies! Unfortunately, there were no New Year's Cookies to be found. :( If we go back, I will know to check for these earlier in the day. Since we all know the food is the most important part of the MCC Sale, the other foods to be found at the CO one were: bierrocks, sausage sandwiches, pie, and ice cream.

Before we left, we joined everyone in attendance in singing 606 and watched part of the quilt auction. Then it was time to return home and after the 3-hour drive, Brian and I enjoyed some still-warm apple butter on whole wheat rolls. Mmm.