age, adulthood, and other funny things

I'm 24, self-confident, and still experience those moments when I feel like a middle school girl getting shunned in the cafeteria. Today at my practicum, I watched as the post-docs gathered by the front door, waiting for two of our staff psychologists to join them to go out for lunch. I remembered last week them saying that since we weren't having our regular training meeting that they would go out for lunch this afternoon instead.

And no, I wasn't invited. There was no reason for them to invite me. I'm only here two days a week and even my supervisor didn't expect me to be here today since it was optional because of the holidays. But here I am, and I was disappointed to realize that instead of eating lunch with the post-docs, three youngish women who I have come to get to know these past few months over lunches, meetings, trainings, and supervision sessions, I would be eating in the break room without them while they went out to lunch.

It felt silly, but suddenly I felt the age difference. I felt like the little sister, watching her big sisters go off together, hoping that one of them would invite her. I walked in an out of the break room a couple of times, watching them gathered, saying something to one of them, then only making eye contact the second time. How I hoped that one of them would say, "Oh hey, we didn't know you were going to be here today, why don't you join us for lunch?"

Even though I'm only a third year doctoral student, completing a part time practicum here, in the past few months, I'd come to feel as an equal to the staff here. I'm always aware that the full time staff have more experience than me and I have a lot to learn from them, but recently interacting with the postdocs, I'd come to feel like one of them, eating lunch together, talking about our clients, our families, dates, etc, sharing our frustrations and excitements with one another. I'm going to be sad to leave these new friends. I hope that we'll keep in touch, but it's unlikely that I've established any deep, lasting connections with them. At best, they'll be good professional contacts to consult with when I'm applying for internship and post-doctoral positions - good contacts to have, for sure.

Now I understand why coworkers in full-time office jobs often become close friends. I've never worked a job when I took lunches with coworkers. Just two hours a week, plus meetings and trainings and consultations together, and that's sadly sometimes more time than I spend with many of my other friends during the week. And though we're of different backgrounds and life stages and personalities, there are some qualities that counseling psychologists share together that make it easy to connect.

And so, I'm sad that I'm not really their equal. That they go out to lunch together while I stay behind. That I'll be leaving this practicum in a few weeks, and will be saying goodbye to them, goodbye to lunches together, goodbye to laughing about weird diets and fashions, goodbye to informal consultations about client frustrations with them.

Maybe it makes today's experience all the more sad because I've been realizing more and more how little things like age and life stages can matter when it comes to adult friendships. I have friends 3-4 years younger than me still in college, friends several years older than working or in graduate school, single friends, married friends, friends who are mothers and fathers. One of my friends calls this an "urban tribe." Why do many churches divide people up into "homogeneous" groups of Young Singles, Young Marrieds etc.? I threw a well-attended party Friday night, a house show in which three of my musician friends played, and it was wonderful to look around see the diverse friends around me. Friends, strangers, college students, grad students, single, married, fathers, pregnant women, two of my pastors, coworkers, neighbors, friends of friends little sisters, mostly White, but also black, Indian, Turkish, people who see me as an authority figure, people who see me as a mentee to shepherd, people who see me as their friend, sister, equal, all eating queso, drinking beer cider, listening to music, having conversation, telling stories, imitating Obama, singing songs. All seemed more equal that night, any normal power differentials (for lack of a better term) seemed to blur as we all enjoyed the music and company.

Our church elders last night spoke about maturity, recognizing that we're a young church, and we need older adults with more life experience and maturity, but also recognizing that age and experience doesn't always equal wisdom and maturity. I'm thankful to be growing into maturity, I'm thankful to have people in my life who are more mature than me in different areas. I have no idea how to wrap up this blog post, it's taken a turn that I didn't expect. This often happens when I'm writing. I have in mind to write one thing, and then discover that it's related to something else, something more important to me than the thing I first set out to write about. Usually I like to connect this back to the beginning, but maybe there's not a need for that.

I'm 24, self-confident, and still experience those moments when I feel like an adult.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

It seems somewhat lame to just recount the events of my weekend, but I had an unexpectedly great weekend. Seriously, I was expecting it to be lame, and kinda boring, but this was one of my most enjoyable weekends spent in BCS in recent memory.

Friday, I worked, then went to this web conference with the project directors behind the revision of the WAIS-IV. This was probably the nerdiest thing I've done yet in graduate school, but I really enjoyed hearing how this test was developed! I saw some clients at a nursing home, then went to a church where some evacuees from a nursing home are living right now. Friday evening, I ate some chili, met some folks from Taiwan, and sang Bohemian Rhapsody karaoke at an event for international students at my friend's church, then watched the presidential debate with said friend, my roommates, and their boyfriends. I must be the man in that relationship, because only me and the guys actually stayed awake through the entire debate.

Saturday, I slept in a little, saw some more clients at the nursing home, and administered two of the three WAIS-IVs that I gave over the course of the weekend. These were administered to teenagers, so in between testing, we talked about Metallica, Pillar, and colleges. I haven't been around many teenagers lately, so I guess it was fun to learn that teenagers talk about . . . music. And school. Hmm, how far have I really come in 6 years? After I got done with that, I headed to the hippest bar/venue in BCS called Revolution with Neeta and her boyfriend. We drank sangria and watched a folky kinda chic with a guitar, cowboy boots, and a sleeve of tattoos on one arm sing Neutral Milk Hotel songs and songs I think she wrote about leaving Georgia to go find her baby in Texas with the sun setting in her rear view mirror. Unless that's another Neutral Milk Hotel song.

Sunday I administered my final WAIS-IV, ate some corndogs, went to church, and did some laundry. The weekend was productive, but also randomly fun. Even when I was "working" (administering tests, seeing clients), I still had a fun time. I feel especially blessed to receive things that I wasn't expecting. I often get down about things that I don't have, and wishing that God would bless me with other things and often feeling like he's holding back on giving me what I need. But the truth is, he's blessing me with what he's blessing me with, and he's not giving me what he's not. I want to live fully in the present and enjoy the life that I have, instead of wishing that my life looked different or that I was living in the future. I want to be fully engaged on not miss out on what is now and what opportunities are already present for me.

youth and the illusion of maturity

I spent some time this evening chatting with a 17 year old high school senior, or rather, being questioned curiously by her. She's applying to colleges, wants to go to a small private school, wants to study psychology or maybe education, but isn't sure if she wants to stay in state or go back to the east coast where she lived the first 16 years of her life.

She asked me all sorts of things about TCU, A&M, psychology, professors, Fort Worth, my decision of where to go to college. The most interesting was her asking if college was harder than high school, and me explaining how college and high school are different. Then she wanted to know how grad school was different from college, and is it hard. She was an engaging young woman, and I enjoyed our conversation. It really doesn't feel like it was that long ago when I was in her shoes, making the same decision of where to spend four (but wound up being 3 1/2) years of my life.

After the conversation wrapped up, I was struck by how in spite of her eloquence and intelligence, how young she seemed. How inexperienced, how unexposed, how naive. Talking about college with her almost seemed ridiculous - how can a seventeen year old make a decision like that? How does a seventeen year old know whether she wants to stay in state or move away, when she doesn't even know much about the field of psychology which she claims she wants to study, when she didn't even know that the fields of school psychology or organizational psychology existed? And then it hit me - this was exactly where I was six years ago when I was trying to make that decision. How the hell did I make a decision like that at that age? I didn't even know what organizational psychology was at the age of 17 either!

In six years when I'm 29, a licensed psychologist (cross my fingers), will I look back at the current me and wonder, "How the hell did a 23 year old make those decisions? How did she know what she was doing?" My mom always has lots to say about people in their mid-twenties, how we don't mean to be, but we're very stuck on ourselves. I really don't know whether to believe it or not, and won't know for a few more years. Sometimes I feel so young, but most of the time, I feel like I'm just where I need to be. But that scares me, because I don't remember feeling young when I was 17.