New Job!

Hello everybody! I can't believe it's February already, the time has flown! As you can probably tell by the title of the blog, I got a new job recently which has been super fun and exciting. After working at Topgolf for about two and a half years, I finally gave it up and decided it was time to pursue something that I'm more passionate about. My passion for helping people led me to the Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) here in Portland. What's been cool so far is that I've never really worked with any kids with autism before, and it's been so fun playing with them and seeing how differently autism affects every person.

These last two weeks... or was it three? I don't really remember, but anyway, for the last couple of weeks, I've just been doing training. I did about 40 hours of e-learning in the office last week and the week before, while this week I have started my overlaps. The overlaps are basically where I shadow the other therapists during their sessions to practice running the sessions myself, get comfortable with the Ipads, and build rapport with the kids. The hands-on stuff has been SUPER fun so far. The kids are so cute and smart, it's really cool watching them learn new skills and being able to give them the support that they need and help them keep growing :)

Once I've finished with all the training, I will be certified as an ABA (applied behaviour analysis) therapist! So not only do I get to spend time with awesome kids, but it's also going to be great work experience for me and something that I can add to my qualifications. It's also a really great experience for me to see what kind of thing I might like to do when I'm done with uni. I'll be studying psychology there and my rough plan at the moment is to go into school counselling after I finish my degree. Working at CARD so far has been really helpful in exposing me to different types of learning and difficulties that come along with it, as well as ways that I can be there for support.

Reading my latest book in Coco's during
my lunch break :)

What has been really funny for me while I've been doing everything is how much of my own experience I can already apply to the therapy. The way that my mum raised me and some of the things I learnt from her (and Super Nanny) are techniques that apply directly to running sessions. For example, there was somebody who wouldn't get up off the floor to go to the bathroom yesterday and would cry every time we asked them to stand up and come with us. The therapist I was shadowing was trying different things to try and make it fun for them so they would want to get up, so I suggested a race there to see who could get there first and immediately they got up and ran with me to the bathroom. I felt kind of like Super Nanny, no big deal - but it was really fun.

As a bonus, the Center is located in a prime position for food outings at lunchtime including the mexican restaurant Cha! Cha! Cha!, Coco's doughnuts, Fred Myers, and a Thai restaurant as well. Looks like I'll be eating like a queen while I'm here 😁 Pluuuuus, Coco's has this AMAZING lavender hot chocolate which I've been craving a lot lately and you get a free piece of doughnut with it as a bonus. Free doughnut + amazing hot chocolate = Sophie spending all her income. Sounds good to me!

Anyways, sorry about the long gap between my last post and this one, I will try to keep up with any more updates. For those in Portland, let's pray for snow (not a weak 'snowmagedon' like we had, but a REAL snow storm).

To thank you for reading my post, here are some cute animals in the snow to help get you into the snow-time mindset :)