Time has flown by so fast \u2013 it feels like I started last month, but here we are, in July with the end of my placement year fast approaching. For my final blog post, I\u2019d like to take some time to reflect on the past 10 months or so I\u2019ve spent working in tier 4 CAMHS, bridging in my experiences of undertaking a placement year as an autistic student. Furthermore, I will also reflect a bit on what\u2019s ahead and go through a couple of things that I wish to do in the future based on my year.<\/p>\n
I knew that settling into a totally new environment with new people was going to be a struggle for me, a struggle that is common amongst autistic people, but one that I would have to endure. I remember sitting in my team meetings back in September being clueless as to what was going on while pretending I understood everything. This, of course, gave me a huge amount of imposter syndrome, especially as everyone else around me had years of clinical experience in the field. It felt like I walked in with just my lived experience of autism, and a dream.<\/p>\n
Experiencing staff shortages in NHS services first hand meant that I had to adapt to my roles considerably quicker than how I would have liked. At times, the workplace dynamic felt almost \u2018upside down\u2019 to how I was expecting, as myself and the other undergraduate student, had to teach our team\u2019s new assistant psychologists some of our workplace processes, as well as how to use the team\u2019s spreadsheets and online patient systems. Even though it felt like I was being thrown in the deep end at times, my confidence has grown considerably over the past few months, and being able to cope with the (at times) high workload and fast pace has been ultimately rewarding, despite its challenges.<\/p>\n
Another thing that I\u2019ve found rewarding was being able to observe such a diverse range of autistic young people, many of whom also experience other conditions that impact on their daily functioning and wellbeing \u2013 such as attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression, learning disabilities, Prader-Willi Syndrome etc. Writing up notes for behavioural observations and young person perspectives has been incredibly interesting, with each assessment and case I am involved with being so different each time! Furthermore, the service having a neuroaffirmative approach has been really helpful, and it ensured my colleagues would be supportive and understanding of my condition while on placement.<\/p>\n
While I am going to miss my placement, I\u2019m also excited for what\u2019s ahead for me. This past year has been invaluable to me (not to mention a nice break away from standard university coursework and exams!) and I can\u2019t wait to utilise all that I have learnt so far in future roles. For me personally, doing a placement has made me realise that I do not necessarily want or need to do a Panic Masters\u2019 as soon as I finish my undergraduate degree to become a clinical psychologist. I realised that I enjoyed being able to apply my theoretical knowledge in a way that makes the positive impact of psychology and mental health research more tangible, hence my desire to continue working in clinical settings in the future.<\/p>\n
If I had to list three things that I would like to do in future roles, based on my past year, I would love to:<\/p>\n
All this being said, returning to university in late September is going to be yet another massive change for me (as if I haven\u2019t endured that enough!). The main thing I\u2019m excited about for my final year is reuniting with my friends, whom I\u2019ve sorely missed. Furthermore, I\u2019m excited for all my final year modules \u2013 I\u2019ll be really interested in seeing the links between the research and the clinic, especially as one of my second semester modules is dedicated to autism. I imagine that I\u2019d see this in a different light considering my work experience on top of my lived experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time has flown by so fast \u2013 it feels like I started last month, but here we are, in July with the end of my placement year fast approaching. For my final blog post, I\u2019d like to take some time...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[585,310,392,198],"tags":[724,208,921,942,943],"class_list":["post-9755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-of-psychology","category-placements","category-students-with-autism","category-undergraduate","tag-facultyofhss","tag-placementlife","tag-psychology","tag-autism","tag-nhs"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}