I am extremely fortunate.
I’m fortunate and grateful for many things in my life, but lately I’ve been thinking about the amazing support I have in my profession.
In my newsletter that went out today, I wrote about my excitement regarding the upcoming 2011 American Music Therapy Association conference.
The coolest thing to me is that I couldn’t afford to go if it weren’t for the fact that I have a national association that supports me. I am honored to be one of AMTA’s scholarship winners this year. Each year, AMTA awards scholarships to music therapists for conferences, continuing education, research, and more. They select the recipients based on merit, as well as financial need when appropriate.
This will be my first ever National Conference, and I couldn’t be more excited. It’s in my own home state of Georgia, and I’m going to finally get to meet many of the wonderful music therapists you see commenting on here.
So what are some of the things that I get out of this gift from AMTA?
Getting to meet Music Therapists from all over the country! I don’t know every music therapist in the South East, but we’ve been pals for a good while, and new faces are fun! In the past two years, I’ve made invaluable connections with music therapists to the north, south, east, and west of me (Hi, Kat!). I’m excited to not only get to meet them, but also to let other mt’s know about me!
Sessions, sessions, sessions! If there is one that that AMTA National Conference isn’t short on, it’s session topics. I’ve been putting off looking at the schedule of sessions because I have no idea how I will pick one from 10-20 simultaneous offerings! Decision making is not my strong suit and I wish I could clone myself to attend everything!
Coming home with full batteries! My favorite thing about conference is how I come away with a thousand new ideas. I’ve been going hard here lately and am ready for some new input. Learning from and talking to my colleagues always gives me a fresh view on what I do each day, and gets my refreshed and recharged to come back to work!
What are you grateful for the opportunity to do? What do you get out of those opportunities? Share in the comments!
OMG, I’m a conference scholar too!! How did I not realize you were also in the SER??? I’ve followed your blog and tweets for a few months now, and I just can’t believe I didn’t know that! Forgive my flakiness. I hope we get to meet at conference, and I thank you for writing this terrific post! It truly is such a wonderful gift to be able to attend conference. I’m getting so excited about attending, too!
Uhm WHOAH! And I realized just now that you are in HUNTSVILLE! Have a few friends there and was just in Scottsboro AL this past weekend! Can’t wait to meet you!
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