I've been reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which I've found to be rather interesting. A section in the book talks about the role that our unconscious associations play in our beliefs and behaviors. There is a research website that uses a computer program to test the strength of underlying associations people make with different pairs of ideas. The premise is that all of us have implicit associations of which we are unaware and will tend to affect our behavior. One of the Implicit Association Tests (IAT) is called the Race IAT, it first asks the test taker to indicate his/her attitude toward African Americans and European Americans and then administers the test to measure the strength of positive and negative associations with each. There are all kinds of tests on the website: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. I took the test and was surprised by the result.

Woohoo! I am no longer an intern. 3000 hours of supervised training to become a licensed professional counselor has gone by quickly. Here are the last two years summed up in numbers, no pun intended.

4,500: the number of emails that have accumulated in my outlook account since starting at the agency

1,500: the number of face-to-face client hours required out of the 3000 hours to be an LPC

1,167: the amount of minutes that I'm required to spend in face to face time with clients in one week

619: the name of the signature move belonging to the wrestler, Rey Misterio

20: the # of kids on my current caseload whose favorite show is Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel

15: the amount of times that a child has left my office crying, usually because I wouldn't allow them to take one of my toys home

11: the number that clients pick when I ask them any scale questions like "On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being never and 10 being always, what number would you pick to show how angry you were?"

9: # of feelings face drawings I have on the wall in my office

7: the number of times that I use the phrase "Help me to understand..." in any given day

5: # of reports to child protective services

4: # of days during the 5 day work week that I play either Uno or Jenga with a client

2: how many diet cokes I bring to work every day

1: a Batman invitation to a client's birthday party, he was turning 6 and I was unable to attend.