Friday Music Therapy Overview

Sorry I was not able to blog yesterday. I didn't have internet access as I was on the road traveling back home to celebrate my birthday! Happy birthday to me! :D I'm 21 now!!!

Anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit about my overall experience with this trip since we didn't have music therapy with Veronica on Friday as she was going out of town for the music therapy regional conference.

First of all, I absolutely loved the Rise School. I didn't know how much I was going to enjoy the school setting and if Veronica was going to have a personality I meshed with. But it was phenomenal! I am seriously looking into applying at the Rise School in Dallas and the one in Austin now for my internship next summer. The kiddos were amazing as were the teachers. I enjoyed the environment of the Rise School - everyone helped each other and everyone was very friendly and accepting. If something didn't go quite right, oh well! And they were all very very pro music therapy (hard to find people like that, especially a place where EVERYONE is pro music therapy!!).

Secondly, I feel a couple of changes could have made the trip better. For example, for future trips, I suggest that maybe you could pool the money that would be used for food and distribute it equally to each person to use individually. I know I hardly ate anything worth more than... $4? I had brought my own snacks, my mom brought me some lunches/dinners, and my group members went to the grocery store and got things I would not normally choose to eat (tacos for instance). So instead of saying that we have $175 for groceries, I think it would have been a better idea to just give like $25-30 to each person and tell them to go shop for whatever food they want. I know that was an issue as we ran out of groceries (bread, milk, turkey) on Wednesday at lunch and still had 3 more days of the trip! It was all just a pain and a hassle since there was just one vehicle to travel to the grocery store in, so we all had to go at once and try to squeeze into that -awful- vehicle.

That brings me to my next point... that SUV was the worst vehicle I have EVER seen in my entire life. It was cramped, crowded, uncomfortable, and definitely could not fit all of us. Thankfully my travel plans were different than the rest of my group, because had I tried to ride in the van with them, my luggage and body would NOT have fit. There was absolutely no room for anybody to move or hardly breathe. I know we have talked about how it's the size you use on other trips and people are supposed to sacrifice, but on at 12 hour car trip plus 30 minutes to and from the school (plus any grocery stops along the way) it really really physically hurt to sit in the back row of that vehicle. Just food for thought that maybe you might want to find a different rental company or at least a different vehicle!

Also, I think we needed to have a planner in our group. Our group was lacking any sort of communication in many aspects. First, what time were we going to leave in the morning? Who honestly knew... I was told we would leave around 7-7:15 each morning... some mornings people had said "oh, we decided not to leave until 7:30" but they never told me so I woke up early for no reason. Next, we didn't do ANYTHING as a group. After the music therapy part was finished, we went to the Church and some of us played Rock Band until we went to sleep... literally from about 1 pm to about 8 pm or so, we just all sat around the Church wasting our time... It would have been nice to go out to the zoo or aquarium or just explore downtown Houston since the weather was gorgeous, but because we didn't have a planner nobody stood up and said "hey, let's all go do this today."

Overall, I enjoyed the music therapy aspect of the trip, but not the group members/environment aspect. I could have found alternative housing, travel, and food costs that would have been a better suit for me since I was basically left alone in the Church all the time to fend for myself anyway... If this trip were to happen again next year, I would not go on it. I would contact Veronica or find another place to observe music therapy and ask if I could come in and help out for a week. It would be easier and less chaotic if I did all of that on my own and did my own thing.