Monday, November 03, 2008

The unseen eye

I had a weird experience today that is becoming more and more common. A girl I had never met before was waiting in the hallway with me to speak to a professor. She looked and me and said, "I think I've observed you in the clinic downstairs." Since undergraduates in the program need to have a certain number of observation hours (25 in all), and since they can watch our sessions in the clinic on the first floor, this is not unheard of.

The weirdest part of it all is realizing how very many people have likely watched me in sessions that may or may not have gone well, and knowing that they now have some impression of me as a clinician, as well as knowing that I might have shaped their view of the field in some way. Frightening, since I'm by now means an expert at what I am doing and and still learning so much every day.

Then again, maybe I'm not nearly as well known in reality as in my head, and perhaps it's only a few people who have observed me. Either way, it's nice to get to meet some of those people who you never even knew were behind that one-way mirror.

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