these 2 days of work made me think and reflect on alot of things.

yesterday was a day of meeting with principals for our adhd team, followed by a classroom observation of a suspected autistic pupil on behalf of my mentor, and 2 sessions of assessment in the afternoon.

after the meeting, two of us were just chatting with this counsellor from a school.. and what she said just inspired me so much. perhaps it's the way she talked.. perhaps it's her vibrancy and passion.. the way she spoke made me feel like she truly wants to help, and she cares so much for the kids. and towards the end, she shared with us that she had a severe stuttering problem when she was young (truly shocking cos she's so confident and charismatic..).. which is why she really want to help kids overcome their learning difficulties cos she understands how frustrating it feels.

then at the classroom observation.. while observing the kid.. watching his behaviour, his moves.. i dunno.. i was just thinking.. hmm so this boy is suspected of asd. how can we help him? will it really do him better if we identify him, diagnose him, "label" him, and try to intervene? wouldn't he feel segregated from the rest of the normal kids in his class? he may just have a mild case of asd. he is still highly functioning n can interact and all.. but he is indeed having some problems with social skills.. evidently. but would he become acutely aware of his problem if we pick him out? already during the observation, he kept looking back at us, seemingly aware that we're all observing him, because by now, it's obvious that pple around him like teachers, counsellors, psychologists r trying to reach out to him. wouldn't he feel like he's different, and special? he gave me the feeling that he's very conscious about himself.

and today, our division had a full day of workplan seminar.. had this speaker who's an anthropologist who shared w us lotsa meaningful things. and the work she did, just inspired me so much and reminded me of the kind of things i've always wanted to do.. and i made this mental checklist of things i'd really like to carry out:

-do a community project in an overseas school. perhaps cambodia/vietnam. i wanna teach the poor kids there.
-volunteer at a children's ward/hospice.
-start a project whereby volunteers can write letters and cards to children who are terminally ill, to give them support and friendship. this idea came up somewhere when i was interning at mcys.. somehow we never got down to it.

really wanna do these someday.. but i've no idea where to find the time/resources to start with.. sigh. i know one day i'll carry them out.

all i can say is.. this job really makes us think/reflect on ourselves and alot of issues in life. i think psychologists think too much. but in a way, we need to. there's alot of personal growth and development to be done, before we can think of helping others. the learning curve and challenge is very very steep.. we have to keep checking on ourselves..

sometimes the more i think, the more i question, and ultimately i end up with more questions and confusion than answers.