terrypurple73 | (no subject)

I went to The Army tonight (haha, can you tell how long I’ve been there?), and one of the case managers cornered me immediately. I showed up early because I knew I was teaching Readiness tonight (since Bethany, the usual instructor, had her baby on Sunday!). Lisa about pounced on me and dragged me into Suzi’s office, shutting the door before she even turned on the light. To tell the truth, my first thought was that a resident had assaulted someone, or some other emergency situation. Well, it turns out that Bethany’s baby isn’t the only staff news on the floor of the 37th Street program. Turns out my supervisor has resigned. Effective immediately. We had supervision on Friday, she wasn’t in yesterday, and she turned in her resignation letter today. No one really knows details, there’s just speculation, but.... Good lord. Totally out of the blue for me. Just crazy. I don’t really know what to think about any of it. How does someone just poof leave and be done? She’s been with the program almost a year, and at the Salvation Army longer a lot longer than that.
It’s hard, because even though I know other staff had issues with her, I still had a lot of respect for her. I liked her, and I related well to her. We just had things in common, and she taught me a lot. I know it’s not anything personal, but to an extent, I feel sort of abandoned. I’ve learned a LOT at my experience so far, and a lot of it comes from things Theresa taught me. I know a lot of it came from other things that she had nothing to do with, but.... She’s been my supervisor, the one who has seen me through so much of it. I just connected well with her.
I’m worried about some of the things that need to get taken care of as far as issues for my seminar class. I know that Barb will be understanding, because she has no choice but to be. The other issue is that for the other class I’m taking with Barb, Family Violence, I’m pretty far behind. I have felt often (for years now) that with the full load of activities I take on, taking 16 credits a semester just might be too much. There always seems to be one class that takes the brunt of my procrastination. Which I suppose is better than all my classes taking a larger chunk of it, but.... This semester it is Family Violence. It’s interesting, but I just can’t make myself work. So now I need to talk to Barb about how I’m behind in that and I realize it, but we also need to talk on a professional level about my practicum and how that is going to change drastically with the rest of the semester. So I have to have a discussion with her that needs to go between all-professional-and-on-top-of-things and please-forgive-me-for-falling-behind-on-my-schoolwork. That should be a fun talk. Neat.
I know the other staff on the floor will take good care of me. They’ll help out with all my class stuff, and with supervising as best they are able, and all of it. But Theresa added a different perspective to what that program is about, and to what homelessness means. A lot of the learning I have gained that is skills-based is from what I have actually done, and what I will continue to do for the rest of the semester, as far as case management, interviews, teaching Readiness class, etc. But the knowledge I’ve learned about being a social worker and how the field works and all of that- that’s been from working with Theresa.