SER-AMTA 11

In the last week, a number of significant events worthy of a blog post have happened and as these events pile up, the less time I have to actually blog about them. I've finished my internship, signed up to take the CBMT (in a few short weeks), started my first music therapy job, attended regional conference, and I am in the process of moving out of the place I lived during my internship. In the next few weeks, I'll also need to decide on the future direction (and name!) of this blog. So needless to say, blogging has taken a backseat.

However, I'm going to start on that mountain of topics tonight. We'll start with conference, as that is the most time sensitive topic.

This weekend, I attended the SER-AMTA (that's "South Eastern Region - American Music Therapy Association") conference in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Conference this year was great as always, but for different reasons this time around. I must say being away from my beloved school for a year made arriving at conference much more exciting. Everywhere I turned was a classmate I hadn't seen since I left. I had to ask them all about their jobs or internship plans and explain my current/future plans. It was a blast. I got to meet countless students from other schools, which was awesome as well.

This year was also the first time I got to meet many of the music therapists I know through Twitter. Last year, I was a newbie on the Twitter Train, so I didn't really get to meet anyone. This time around, I got to meet all sorts of people who I basically feel I already knew. It was fun putting faces with online persona's. Many of these people are professionals who I have a great amount of respect for, and it was really uplifting to hear their comments on my new job and completing my internship.

Finally, this was my first conference as a pseudo-professional. While I won't be taking the CBMT until the end of the month, I am now finished with my internship and, for all intents and purposes, a college graduate. As noted before, I'm also now employed (more about that later, but I'm LOVING it)! Getting to network and interact with other professional music therapists as a colleague rather than a student had a totally different feel, one that made me feel very proud and accomplished. I started my college career as a music therapy major and never changed it. That was 5 years ago. It's been a long time coming.

More posts on the way, but these are some very exciting times for me. It's a really great feeling having a strong sense of direction in your career, and I feel especially blessed to have that this early on in mine.