I, like any other Child Life Specialist, consider adaptability to be one of my strong suits. Generally speaking I am pretty good at having things switched up and am usually excited to start something new. The most recent tough transition for me was actually accepting my first job as a Child Life Specialist. This was super crazy to me! I'd been working for so long to get to this point. It happened, and then I felt like I didn't understand what my life was.
Transitioning from a student to professional was hard and also REALLY weird. I had spent the last eighteen years of my life learning and perfecting my role of student. I was dang good at it too, my GPA would confirm it. But, then all the sudden there were no assignments to be graded, no projects, no homework.... none of it. I will be 100% honest, I had been really excited about all of this, but when it actually became a thing I felt really weird about it. I got home each day after my first week of work and thought "now what?" I had been so used to doing school stuff all day and then coming home and having extra work to do that I literally had no clue what to do with myself.
I was able to find things to fill my time though, all those lessons on self-care helped me out with this one. I was able to start reading more, actually cooked dinners for myself, and most recently started writing this blog. It all has made me so happy that I am not a student anymore because I actually have time to be me now. It's important to work hard, but it's equally important to know how to relax. It was a tough transition for me, but I made it out the other side. There are lots of tough transitions one goes through in life, the important part is to not let them scare you.
-K
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