holy shit, i have letters after my name.

So i passed my clinical licensing exam. Shit. This means I have no excuse to not get a "real" job. I was hoping to sabotage myself long enough to put off this unfortunate realization. Now I have no excuse. Except for the fact that I could potentially fail this last semester because someone had the grand idea to make it the hardest semester of the entire program. Hi, let me introduce you to my friend, 'Burnout'. You don't give 150 graduate students working with people a damn conniption attack so that they end up needing therapy themselves. Which is not to say that there aren't some prize people in my program that wouldn't benefit from some quality shrink time.
I'm so over it. And if I have to write one more paper about how my personal use of self affects my practice, I'm going to freak out. Yes, my dad sucks. Yes, I have been cheated on. Yes, I've had an eating disorder. And I've piled it all away into a beautiful little Pandora's box which I like to envision as dark ocean blue with some gold swirled in. Weird? I'm sure Freud with have a field day with that one. Now stop trying to fucking get at and pry it open!
The point is, if I have to find one more coffee shop in Philadelphia to study at and be given dirty looks because it's not "study hall", I might lose it a little bit. My favorite day so far this semester has been coming into class and having my professor tell us that he's sarcastic, cynical and bitter and if we can't handle it to not waste his time or ours and get the hell out of his class. Holla. To which he added, "We're going to introduce ourselves. And not in that social work introduction way like, "When i was 12 years old I was walking down the street and saw a homeless person and gave him my shoes." (Oh my god, shoes.) Can we say, HERO??
Ok, but can we get back to the fact that I'm now a licensed social worker? Ummmm..........yeah. That's an extremely scary thought. I'm supposed to fix people and the world's problems. Has anyone actually stepped out into the world these days? I go into automatic hibernation mode where I never want to leave the queen-size, triple down comforter, 400 hundred thread count sheet bliss that is my bed. It's a scary place out there.....particularly when you feel all this pressure to just.....save people. Like no one gets a fair chance, and no one really gives a shit either way. And maybe if i just try hard enough, something will give. Part of that, of course, would be taking out the president. Am i even allowed to say that? He probably has this blog on lock. It's just with that license comes this responsibility to know what do and how to do it well. I made this promise to myself a long time ago that I would only do my job as long as I felt I was doing it well. And I just can't shake that sneaky suspicion that I totally suck....my heart is in the right place...?? I'm looking to make an impact. Give back to, take care of, fix someone that feels out of control, not validated, misjudged, outcasted...

On a much lighter note, and one that completely made me escape my life for just a little bit longer, this was how the conversation that was Saturday night started...

AshJones6: when joan rivers comes to philadelphia my aunt claudia does her hair and makeup

and then continued later with...

AshJones6: when i was younger i was petrified that i'd have a handicapped child.
AshJones6: and then on top of that if I am even able to have kids!!!
AshJones6: do you know that it's almost proven that mercury in immunization shots causes autism??

totes love her.