"Dear Professor,
I’m afraid to talk to my supervisor, but after talking to some school psychologists at [Convention] about my internship site and seeing them express their surprise, and after reaching out to cohort members about their workloads, I felt I should reach out to you.
I’m afraid to say anything because I have heard from the internship panel at [Convention] that many work sites think it’s a red flag to not have recommendation letters from supervisors. My supervisor and I had some miscommunication at the beginning of the year that weren’t addressed.
At the beginning of internship, I started out doing some observations of meetings with her and writing reports. At this point I was still being left out of emails as people got used to me being there, and it was generally corrected by my supervisor forwarding me the emails and meeting notices. I would also collect data for her reports as well. I started working with another professional to do a social communications group as well and was asked by a case manager to score some assignments. I am still doing all three of these activities in addition to collecting my own data.
I did my first presentation n October. During the data collection process, she seemed incredulous that I wasn’t comfortable with doing a formal achievement test and that I had only practiced on other adults at this point. She also seemed concerned that I was a little apprehensive about not only presenting, but drawing from the data to explain to parents since at my practicum site I had not had the chance to present before. How to go through the presentation of my report and how to lead determining eligibility was not clear to me, and there were kinks that we had to work out (I wasn’t familiar with the system we use, I didn’t realize that two different forms weren't the same form, I didn’t realize that you could have multiple secondary eligibilities, etc.), so there were moments where I wasn’t prepared although I prepped for meetings and tried my best.
Then, when my 20-day rotation started, she told me that my priority was to my main internship site and that I couldn’t do entire evaluations at my rotation placement. This was because the intern last year was asked to hold a caseload at that site, being their one day a week, and I’m not getting paid to do evaluations there so I should put the work at [Main School] before work there. I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember the direct quotes and there’s no verbal record. I was a little confused but I thought it made a little sense, so I left it alone.
The way I was told we handled our caseload between one another is that I would volunteer to take cases interesting to me and take ones she suggested may give me opportunities for growth.
During this first semester, I didn’t feel like I was getting a lot of supervision, but I was under the impression that interns are supposed to be more independent and I thought it was normal so I didn’t address it. It was also never formally discussed that I needed to put supervision on her calendar in blocks of time so that she could accept it and have me initiate the meetings, so I tried to get supervision informally by asking questions and asking for feedback on report writing and to debrief after presentations. I only found out that I was supposed to do this after our school/internship evaluations. I set up a meeting to talk about them. I blocked about an hour of time to go over them.
Before we went over the evaluations, she informed me that an emergency meeting had been scheduled for a difficult initial evaluation that was in the works, so instead of an hour we only had 30 minutes. This only left us time to go over the evaluation she filled out for me. When going over our evaluations, I found out that she had concerns about my being able to professionally have a relationship with students because she said she hadn’t observed my interactions with students although she readily admitted she doesn’t see me out in the school interacting with students even if I was, which I am. She said that she felt uncomfortable that I had previously expressed insecurity about being in a high school and interacting with students because I didn’t want to mess up. She expressed that she had concerns about my lack of independence, and stated that generally starting in January, interns are fully independent and it concerned her that I was not there yet, but I would be and we’d work on that. She expressed she had concerns about my inability to make connections between different parts of tests, and that I didn’t do what I said I was going to do, but didn’t cite any examples for me to work off of. The only thing I could think of is the time I left a page off of a document for a case because I didn’t know the page existed, and instead put the data into the the other page that seemed the same.
To date, I have done lots of small requests related to her paperwork, I have written ten reports averaging 10-13 pages, written the paperwork for those reports (9 re-evaluations, 1 initial), written parts of reports, and presented in 6 of them with varying degrees of success. I feel since the beginning of the year I have gotten more independent with report writing, observing, testing, meeting with work peers about students, functioning in the environment, and being more independent. I had also begun putting supervision on my supervisor’s calendar.
Most of those evaluations have included data collected and summarized from: Extensive record reviews, formal academic testing (Specific Test), teacher feedback form summary, student observations (2 on average), behavior assessment/behavior intervention (and all paperwork for 2 of them), [Name] Rating scales, [Name2] Rating scales, Student interviews, [Name3] rating scales, a [IQ Test], a Forced-Choice Reinforcement Survey progress-monitoring data, and the [IQ Test 2].
I would have presented a 7th, but it was during [Convention]. When I told my supervisor about the conflict (the meeting had been moved from the Wednesday to the Thursday), she commented that she guessed I would lose out on the experience of presenting the report, then.
On Thursday 1/25, I had 6 open cases and was doing observations piecemeal for other reports on top of handling other responsibilities such as attending two problem-solving meetings a week, opening domains for the other cases that are currently open, planning for a social communications group, and writing reports. I had two full re-evaluations due on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. I also had scheduled supervision for 1/25. During that meeting, three weeks after the start of January when we started up again, I asked her for feedback on some of the topics she addressed in my evaluations. She told me it was too early to tell, which is fine, I agree it may be too early. She then expressed concern with my ability to handle a typical caseload and expressed apprehension about my being able to be an independent school psychologist next year because she felt I was still asking too many questions, which I hadn’t realized was a problem. She cited that the intern from [Another School] at [Second High School] was holding 16 kids on her caseload. She then told me that she wasn’t trying to get cases off of her caseload, but that she felt it would be a good experience for me to handle her entire caseload for awhile and see how I fare, and that we’d meet at the beginning of the week and the end of the week to touch base about the caseload. I felt uncomfortable creating a dialogue around this because I hadn’t yet looked at the entire caseload and I didn’t feel comfortable refusing, so I agreed.
I should mention the hours that were explained to me for the job were 7:45AM – 3:15PM, but I understand that I may work longer depending on what needs to be done as is the nature of the job. Since January 8th, I have worked 7AM – 4:30 regularly, and on a number of occasions have stayed until 5PM or 8PM to get work done that I couldn’t take home (student files). I have regularly worked on the weekends writing reports. I have regularly worked until 10PM from home. On 1/24 worked from home until 10:30PM eating dinner at my computer, and on 1/25 I worked until 12:30AM to make sure I had a report done for which we got consent back late to be able to meet with case managers on both 1/25 and 1/26 to determine goal drafts.
On 1/25, I also took time to sit down and look at the entire caseload that we have until the end of the year. My supervisor says it is a small caseload for this time of the year. There are 26 cases, of which 15 are currently open, and 3 of them she has written reports for. So there are 12 cases I am responsible for, 3 are due next week, and 1 only has a record review and is due on Thursday and requires at least one observation and teacher feedback that only got sent out by the case manager when I asked him to today. I am currently at my 20-day rotation site until the end of February so I am in my main internship site only 4 days out of the week and will be out on Monday for my rotation site.
I panicked when I realized that I went from 2 re-evaluation cases due next week (both requiring various amounts of formal achievement testing, formal cognitive testing and adaptive behavior scales, behavior rating scales, a student interview on absenteeism, a functional behavior assessment, record reviews, teacher feedback data, progress monitoring data summaries, a report summary, and drafting the paperwork) to three, one for each day I am there except Friday.
There’s also an amendment to a case that requires formal achievement testing for written expression that is due ASAP because it’s apparently been on our list since November and I didn’t see it. I tried to take care of the written expression testing and an observation on the re-evaluation add-on due next week but both students happened to be absent today.
I want to ask, is this normal? I haven’t completed anything for my internship log since October because I was learning how to do the job, and now I feel overwhelmed because I literally haven’t done anything but work for the past three weeks. I have not had a sit-down dinner at the table for three weeks. I come home, my fiancé makes me dinner that I eat at my computer desk while I work. I didn’t even do anything on the 3-day Martin Luther King weekend because I was working on reports for internship. I have meant to bring it up, but I am apprehensive about causing trouble and I don’t want to be any trouble.
When I went to [Convention] and was talking to some of the older school psychologists, they seemed shocked at how much I am working for being an intern, which prompted me to reach out to you. I feel overwhelmed and burnt out, but I am afraid to talk to my supervisor about it.
Part of it may be that I am also dealing with the terminal illness of my grandma, and some other personal issues that require medical care. I was absent about 7 times because of medical issues dealing with going to the doctor that I could not reschedule, but I tried my best to keep up with the pace and not lose out on opportunities. However, I still have the suspicion that I may be being taken advantage of in this case?
I am not afraid of work, but I am nothing but tired lately, and being unable to make time for myself, feeling exhausted all the time, and being unable to make time to complete my internship logs is a huge red flag for me that there is something very wrong with the way things are, and I’m not sure how to proceed without making it look like I am incompetent and unable to be independent.
Admittedly, she did ask me how I felt today from across the room, but before I could answer someone walked into the public space we were in and I felt uncomfortable being honest with her so I said I was fine.
I know you asked me for my available time so that you could call me this weekend. I do not have anything planned this weekend except to finish writing two reports and sleep. If you call, I will pick up or call you back shortly after if I miss your call.
Thank you,
Chitoshi"
She did not call.... I worked 82 hours this week total and I have only had food breaks and my fiance saying "you need a nap you're exhausted breaks." The work for this coming week still isn't complete....
