I'm So PRDE (pronounced purdy)

*** Congrats News ***
Congrats to the Clymer family who is getting ready to start a new adventure or their own (this is in addition to the new baby that will be arriving shortly). Jamie is leaving is long-time career with Trader and moving on to new opportunities in Atlanta, Ga. Kelly, Peyton and 1/2 (the baby), will be joining him once the house sells. So everyone cross your fingers, say your prayers and offer up any good will to help them along.

*** On to the Blog ***

In addition the all the academic evaluation we undergo in grad school, we have these evaluations called Professional Role Development Evaluation (aka PRDE). Each professor that you have every quarter evaluates you on your interpersonal skills, general academic ability, other subjective areas that are believed to make one a good psychologist. The topic areas include "Ability to Handle Stress," "Quality of Oral Expression," "Openess to Feedback," etc. As you can imagine, the evaluations can be anxiety provoking as they examine things that can be difficult to accept about yourself.

So last week we were given our first round of PRDEs. And yes, I am going to brag, in part because when I told Maddie, her response was, "Great Mom, can I have a snack?"

I totally rocked them! Two professors recommended that I be considered for special commendation.

Comments from my PRDEs:
"Counseling skills were well above average for this level of development."
"Very thoughtful and mature"
"Considerable evidence of potential to be an excellent therapist."
"Top 2% of class"

So yay! But no time to rest on my laurels. Winter quarter began last week. They weren't kidding. This is going to be a rough one. Mountains of reading, dozens of assignments and lots of projects. But it's also going to be a great quarter in the sense that I will finally get into the meat of the program. Also, I'm finally getting out into the profession a bit more.

In addition to school, Miss M and I are up to other things. Maddie, thanks to Mark's prompting, is learning to ride the unicycle (photo to come shortly). I am again training for the Flying Pig. I'm doing the half this time around (in addition to the 5K with Maddie).

So that's we're we are now. Not a bad place to be at all, especially considering that Wednesday is the 16th.