i got a promotion last week.

but really it's no news to me. it just means i got my feet deeper into it.

i'm still underpaid, horribly. and overworked.

there's alot of talk about moving off to practise private psychology, setting up psych centres and so forth. places where finally, we get a focused scope of work (and be truly psychologists and just psychologists), we can practise what we want to practise i.e. assessments, interventions, therapy (think no systems work, admin, policies etc), help children more directly although on a smaller scale, shorter working hours, goodbye to horrible bosses.

i think many of us are very excited with the idea. i'm just waiting. but for the next few yrs at least, i'm staying put.

right now i'm shagged out after 10 hours straight of training and then meetings, the last one stretched for 4 hours and i swear i'm braindead. had a training this morning by some external consultant on programme evaluation (which i've to carry out for one of my big big projects assigned by the minister of state) and i swear i dunno wat's going on.

i now have 6 different team leaders and supervisors to report to on various projects and researches and 9 schools (and one reporting officer who doesn't work with me on anything but has to appraise me). last week i mentioned something about getting a new project but not knowing the details yet. congratulations, i was made the secretary, who basically has to do everything a normal member does, PLUS take minutes, act as deputy leader, look into all minute details, book all meeting venues blah blah blah.

i'm kidding if i say i'm coping well. actually i realised that many of my colleagues, even the senior ones, have admitted to their reporting officers that they are not managing at all. everyone's struggling here. but we can only go through each day, struggling, and end of the day still gotta get the work done. i dun blame them for wanting to leave. i dun blame myself for wanting to leave too. 20+ pple covering the work of 50 post allocation and looking after every single primary school and planning all the projects nationwide, i think it's crazinessss.

okok... i know i've been complaining big time about work.. and it's kinda weird cos i seemed to love my job so much... i guess working in hq has been much like trekking thru the forest.. things looked so green at the beginning and u see its true colours only when u've trekked deep enough to uncover the monsters within... and it took me about ten months to reach that point.

will elaborate more on that later... i need to watch tv to de-stress now.

three weeks in a school has turned me into a slob of lazy jelly...

who can blame me? school is a land of haven as compared to hq... things are much slower here, pple more friendly, u see kids everyday, lesser responsibility, and best of all, shorter working hours!! each morning i turn up at any time without anyone breathing down my neck, i can leave at 4+, 5pm (and most pple are already gone by then!), my coordinator always nag at me to go home earlier, my colleagues are wonderful, i spend time playing playdoh with children...

the only downside is, it's gonna make my return to hq so, so much harder. and it starts tmr. gawd.

4 meetings tmr. 3 packed at the same time in the morning, all different projects, all big, and all of which my various team leaders have requested me to attend. one is at Simei. i'm so screwed. can i split myself into 3? best of all, i haven't been able to check my work email so i still dunno what's really going on till i switch on the comp tmr and wait to face the music.

the one meeting in the afternoon is a new project. i'm on a team to plan for our workplan. briefing to plan for a plan. great. another project i wish i never had on my plate, ever. really can't wait to hear about my new, additional roles. sheesh.

and not to mention the countless reports, cases, emails, and i really can't rem what other work sitting on my plate. and come august i'm gonna take over some schools... i haven't had time to prepare for that yet another-huge-role. haven't brush up on all my consultation skills, read up on all the things i'd need to feed the schools, prepare for all the qns schools will ever ask me for advice..

my fingers are really shivering at the mere thought of what's coming ahead.

haven't blogged about my attachment.. it has been great, as a breather away from hq and more. fri's my last day.. and i'm already gonna miss my colleagues, the kids whom i've met and interacted with.. i'll always wonder how they'll be hereafter.

sometimes i wonder, being so far away from them in hq, we're doing all these big things in a bid to impact on kids and improve their situation... but really, sometimes all they need, is to have a person who understands who they are, a person who can give them that bit of warmth and spend a little time to play with them, talk to them, see them for who they are.

school attachment

yesterday was the first day i was attached to school and i met three children with autism/suspected autism.

one lil girl was dropped off by her mum at our room.. so we played with her until it's time for assembly. the girl was painfully shy.. at first i thought she has selective mutism until i asked her a question in mandarin and she replied. then i tried to read simple books with her but realised that she couldn't read, which is no surprise because of her EAL background and she's under support for language issues. but what was telling and made me suspect autism was her echolalia.. so when i read "this is strawberry" she repeated the same words (kids would normally just repeat "strawberry"), and even the exact intonation! no eye contact.. inhibition.. total imitation of play with cars.. sigh. she's a tricky case cos it's complicated by lack of exposure to english (e.g. is she so withdrawn because of self-esteem issues triggered by poor english skills, or is it really poor communication due to autism?).

then another boy.. a small cute boy already diagnosed who barged into our room a couple of times, and talked in an incessantly loud voice (autistic kids tend not to be aware of their inappropriate volume).. started ranting about how stupid his mother tongue teacher is... like how could she teach him nonsense things.. he was practically fuming, with arms crossed, seated on a chair and ranting away... total lack of awareness of authority figures (no respect for teachers and me). he also started asking the support officer whether he has found a girlfriend finally over the june holidays.. and if he has, she'd better be sexy. and he repeated sexy so many times. inappropriate topics from a p1 boy... again a trait of autism.

from these 2 cases we see two extremely different children on the spectrum.. one is the typical withdrawn kind, little verbal language and echolalia... the other is sociable, verbal, expressive, but communication lacks social quality and appropriateness. children with autism are all so different from one another.. all with different traits and manifestations, but most of them are rooted in the triad of impairments and show certain clusters of similarities, which of cos includes the social impairment part.

after having seen so many kids with autism, i find that when u meet one, u can actually "feel" it. there's just an odd quality to the way they interact and behave, although all of them are so different. they all actually give me a very similar feeling, almost like i can sense it. hmm dunno. i hope it doesn't become an occupational hazard to start looking for autistic symptoms.

going to do voluntary work at ethan's school tmr... quite excited. dunno if i'll get ethan's class. still rem seeing him there when i visited the school last time. he was struggling with a teacher and i still rem that pained me. i hope he's getting on well.

bruised up

i've found the fourth bruise on my left ankle.

wrist, elbow, sheen, and ankle. taken altogether it's the ninth, i think. i've lost count.

somebody knock some sense into me and tell me to move on big time. and give me the courage to do so.

******

lotsa things have happened on the work front. changes... things i've committed to... i really need alot of strength and belief at this point in time. i'm still trying to find sources of support i can gather from the nooks in my life.

i've just agreed to another 3.5 years of my life in the service.... 2 years of diploma and 1 yr of service agreement. honestly i'm still so unsure and scared.. i'm not sure if i'm making the right choice here.

there's so much controversy hanging in the office atmosphere now because of the way my management dealt with the diploma.. or rather, the way it dealt with colleagues who refused to take the dip. many of our young ones are leaving... the colleagues i'm fond of and hang out with.. i see the way they are dealt with and i'm sad. i know that if my management do not need me one day i'll be dealt the same way. there's so much anger floating in the air and so many pple discontented with work here.. everyone's too stressed up with the amount of work and resentful with the management. and yet here i am, another 3.5 years.

and then my work attachment. i'm gonna be attached in bukit panj*ng pri school starting this tues, lasting 3 weeks. my days of 7am - 6+pm are gonna start. which means, i'll have to be up by 5am and leave by 5.30am. and it's not the timing and travelling that scares me. granted, this is a great learning opportunity. but so much is expected from me out of this, as the "pioneer" on a work attachment. i have to write a report at the end of it and present my learnings to the whole branch.

generally work has been extremely stressful. no words can describe it and i dun wish to attempt. let's just say i'm given increasing project work... about 5 projects.. and it's not just the amount of work, but the increasingly tough and high level work. for example, i'm recently put in a task force to examine mental he*lth in our children and it's apparently morphing into a few years long project. just defining mental he*lth is taking us months, and my specialist says what we're doing is equivalent work to phd research. i'm working with pple who are phd status, all from each field of specialisation in different branches, i've to try to think and analyse at their level, present on a regular basis to them and my director, and be shoot at with their phd brains and phd mouths. i'm lying through my teeth if i say i'm not freaked out. i dunno how i do it.

and this is just one of my many projects.

and my many projects are just half of my workload. i still serve schools, although this part of work is the one i enjoy most. come august, i'm gonna have 8 schools because my senior is gg off to take her phd and i have to take on some of the schools. my supervisor hinted that she's going to let me front some schools independently. honestly, i feel so unprepared.

i'm so tired. this job is taking so much of me. it requires me to have every kind of skill i can think of. i have to be intelligent, speak impeccably (most of my colleagues speak perfect standard english), have good presentation skills, be able to facilitate workshops and events and meetings, have creative and fast ideas, i have to have time to read up for professional knowledge, i have to learn alot of things quickly from everywhere (different learning dis*rders, how to differentiate them, how to arrive at a diagnosis, strategies to help schools/parents/children, referral process, tens of assessment tools - how to conduct, how to score, how to interpret), have good research and statistical skills, have to reply to tens and hundreds of emails daily, be able to write good reports (feedback forms, parents report, assessment report, psychological report for referral, policy papers, research papers), good professional communication skills to talk to Ps, hods, teachers, parents, external professionals, learn "assertive" language because i provide consultation and give pple advice, know how to deal with pple at different levels (boss, team leaders, supervisor, colleagues, children, school pple), juggle a few events in one day and rush to each one and be able to mental switch immediately, be able to skip lunch, toilet, water breaks.

on the bright side, i've definitely learnt alot in the past yr... interesting things that i do in school.. things that i've seen and encountered. i've assessed hearing impaired children early this yr, met children who are adopted and whose natural parents abused them and were jailed, met lots of parents who cry, who scold us, who are in denial, met a parent who is deaf-mute and has to write on paper for us, met nice Ps, not-so-nice Ps, nice teachers, bitchy ones, conducted a couple of workshops for nice and not-so-nice Ps and teachers.... blah blah blah... and i still really like working with children. in fact i've just bought cute animal stickers which i will give out to my kids from now on.. :)

sigh i dunno... i like my work here and i hate it at the same time. i'm jaded, feel abused and used.. yet when i go to schools i know my duty is to the children... and then i give my best. but how long more can i run i don't know... i really need so much more courage. i hate the bosses... the rules the policies the culture... i like most of my colleagues. but i can't respect the pple i work for. at the end of the day, i must always tell myself, i'm working for the children, and tt keeps me going.