A lovely girls' night at a charming inne
This past weekend was so much fun. Laura, Lynette, and I spent the night at Laura's inne. She is the innkeeper there. How cool is that? How often do you get to say that your friend is an innkeeper? We got to stay in the Presidential Suite. The rooms are so beautiful and charming. I was very enchanted by the place and I understand why people stay there. If I were stuck on a business trip for a week I would definitely choose the inne over the Holiday Inn down the street. Each room has a fireplace and antique furniture. We had a blast. We stayed up late playing games. Laura also got to show off her ice skating outfit to her boss ;). It was very relaxing and fun chilling with the girls. Earlier in the day we had gone into Philly to the Reading Terminal market. That was a lot of fun as well. My camera is broken so I have no pictures to post to document the night :(. However, here are a couple of pictures of our room so you can see the charm of the place.
Lynette and Laura shared this huge bed while I stayed in the coolest hide-away bed I've ever seen. It was in this antique looking cabinet and it folded down.
This is the common room of our suite where we played our games. Each room has a fireplace. Laura says she has helped decorate the rooms in the inne by adding/changing touches here and there. What a perfect job for her!! If you would like to check out more about the inne's history go to:
http://www.generalwarren.com/It was a lovely weekend but unfortunately I had to go back to work today. It is always hard the first day back after break. I survived though and I had a decent day. I have a ton of work to do so I really need to get going. I will do anything to procrastinate my work--even blog :)!!
They don't tell you that in grad school
In grad school they give you the romanticized idea that you are joining this wonderful professional world of speech-language pathology and swallowing disorders. They convince you that you really want to help people and that your way of helping them is by helping their speech, language, swallowing, voice, or fluency disorder. You get training to treat these disorders, still believing you truly want to help people. Most people don't truly get what a speech-language pathologist (SLP) does. Most people think an SLP helps kids who can't speak clearly or who have lisps. SLPs work in hospitals and make recommendations about what type of foods patients should eat, they do swallowing studies to make sure patients don't have food and liquids going into the lungs, they help clients who want to get rid of foreign accents, they work with babies in NICUs, and evaluate speech and language disorders in all age groups (Jack of all trades, master of none?). So when you go to grad school you have to learn to do all of this stuff so you are qualified to work in all of these areas. When you actually make it through grad school, it is quite an accomplishment because you have learned parts of so many different fields (there is a joke among SLPs that "everything is a speech issue"). Like I said before, you set out into the world desiring to help people. What they don't tell you in grad school is that you will be working with real people. Real people who have real issues, behaviors, and attitudes. Real people who will do anything do get what they want. Real people who were taught that they are entitled to have anything they want and if they don't get it then they just need to complain and fight harder. In grad school they don't tell you about the stress of the job, the paperwork, the high burnout rate, or the people out there who are willing to take you to court just to get what they want or feel entitled to.
I really love my job and I truly want to help people. I love working with the kids and most of my parents are wonderful. Unfortunately there are those few that completely ruin it and make me want to switch professions. Yesterday I had a parent accuse me of lying because she was mad about the lack of services her son had received for the past few months. Of course this is not my fault at all and I just walked into a bad situation. She wanted someone to target and unfortunately it was me. I was really upset at first but then I calmed down and remembered that I did nothing wrong. I am just dealing with an upset mother who just wants what is best for her son. She is going about it the wrong way but she only has the best intentions. So having said all of this I feel much better. Who knows what will happen but I know I did the best I could and that is all I can do.
