Welcome to Columbia, Missouri!

So, I moved from Minneapolis, MN to Columbia, MO about a month ago to complete a 10-month internship with the Columbia Public Schools. This internship is year 3 of a 3 year grad school experience at the University of Minnesota. When I'm done with my internship on June 1st, I will officially be done with grad school -- finishing with an MA in Educational Psychology and EdS degree in School Psychology.

How did I end up in Missouri of all places - you may ask... well, here's the story:

Occasionally I get really bored while I'm supposed to be reading articles for class, so I will hop online and look random stuff up on the internet. One day during my first year at the UMN I was trying to occupy my time so I wouldn't have to do work and I decided I would see what type of school districts around the nation were hiring school psychs these days. I went to the National Association of School Psychologists website and went perusing through the job listings and I found a listing for interns in the Columbia Public Schools - they were advertising for about 10 interns and I thought that was a crazy number, so I decided to look up their website and check out the district. It seemed like a pretty well-put-together district from their website. But I wasn't actually looking for an internship at the time so I kind of forgot about it and moved on.

When it was time for me to start applying for internships about a year later I remembered the ad I had seen and went back to the NASP website to check out the possibilities. Once again there was the Columbia Public Schools advertisement, this time for 6 positions. So I gathered some more information, emailed the psych department, and decided that I might as well apply to keep my options open. At that time I had no intention of leaving Minnesota. I had loved my year and a half there and was really hoping to get in internship near the beautiful Twin Cities. Unfortunately, there were only a couple districts in the area hiring interns for pay (and I can't afford to not be paid). So I applied to two districts in Minnesota and this one in Missouri. There were all kinds of internships that I could have applied to -- like one in Anchorage, AK; Prince George's County, MD; Baltimore, MD; and a few in Colorado. None of the other ones really peaked my interest. Before interviewing at any of the schools I remember being on the phone with my sister, Angie, and telling her how I had a feeling I was going to end up in Missouri for my internship, I didn't know why I thought that... I just did.

I interviewed at all 3 schools I applied to and didn't really feel too good about any of them. Interviewing is by far the weakest part of my application, and some would argue to say that it is the most important part of the application process. I really liked two of the districts I interviewed with (Stillwater in MN and Columbia). Both seemed like great districts, they both had good pay and benefits, and they both seemed like I would enjoy the environment. I found out that I didn't get one of the jobs in Minnesota and that I did get the internship in Missouri, so I decided that I needed to come down to Columbia, check out the area and the ward where I could potentially be going to church. Jonathan and I headed down to Kansas City for a weekend trip (Jonathan's sister and her family live in KC, so we spent the weekend with them). I went to the student ward out in Columbia to get a feel for it. It was a fun weekend full of BBQ, Royals baseball, and the Plaza.

To make a long story short, I didn't end up getting either of the internships in Minnesota, but I did get the one in Missouri. I'm not going to lie, I was really bummed! If I wanted to start the application process for 3 newly opened positions in some boondock districts in Minnesota and reject the job in Missouri, I could have gone for it and waited 2 more months before hearing from any of them. But I felt good about accepting the position. It really was the best internship choice of the original 3 in the first place (best pay and benefits, good history of interns, I liked the interviewers the best, they really seemed to like me, pretty large Autism population - which I love), its only downside was that it was in a different state and I would have to move. It actually took me a few weeks to tell some of my friends that I had accepted the position because I was too sad about moving. But I had a great summer (to be documented in subsequent posts) and am now settling into my new area.

Now that I have moved and started my internship, I decided I would document some of the goings-on of my new adventure in Missouri as an attempt to keep connected with people and to partially remedy my sporadic attempts at journaling.