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From: Dale Williams
Date: 10/8/02
Time: 1:33:24 PM
Remote Name: 131.91.248.210
Ms. Rourke,
I’m pleased that you took such an important message from the paper. Risk-taking is an idea I’ve thought about a lot. In fact, it was the theme of my 2000 ISAD paper (there’s an interesting threaded discussion on the topic there, if you’re interested).
I’ve done some reading on “gifted” children (what we used to call bright kids) and learned something interesting. One of the more common traits of these kids is that they don’t like to attempt anything they haven’t mastered. They aren’t natural risk takers. It’s a trend I also see with graduate students, another group of bright individuals (well, most of them). In clinic, many are reticent to try new treatment tasks, behavior modification techniques, etc. for fear of failure. Of course, if we let them get away with this, they’d never progress as SLPs.
Your willingness to challenge yourself, make mistakes, and learn from them indicates a potential to be a great therapist. Keep it up.
As for Judy and mistakes, I think I’ll steer clear of that one. I don’t want to give any fodder to the wise guys out there who might come back with something like, “Yeah, she makes mistakes. She let you write a paper this year, didn’t she?”
Dale