i did not cry
The clinical instructor who has a reputation of making each of her students cry at least once during the semester, and I think she tried doing that rite-of-passage thing with me the other night, when she was giving me feedback and she said that my client had lost all the progress she had made in speech therapy over the summer. Subtext: You made her worse. My gut sank and I felt really despondent and I wanted to die, but I did not cry. Not because I am “strong” or can take criticism but rather because this teaching thing isn’t really about me or my hurt feelings. This clinical therapeutic teaching is about problem-solving, and so when I get a gutshot comment like that I need to think about the problems: Why has my client apparently “lost progress”? And is it really “progress” if it goes away after one month? (Nope.)
