ah life :)

This, again, has been quite a month. It's time to update the few readers of this here blog on the happenings in the sweet life of Mel. Last I wrote I was thinking that it was time to head east....so to help readers understand my thought processi through this whole decision experience:
Choice A: Stay in Provo, do my internship at Heritage Schools working with amazing kids and doing what I really want to do and what will help me a lot in the future with what I want to accomplish in the way of helping youth get out of their issues and live productive happy lives.
Choice B: Sun Valley Adaptive Sports. Not only is this in Idaho, but it is where I spent seven happy months. I LOVE it there. What attracted me to this opportunity besides the location was that I would have the opportunity to get a little different experience than I have in the past with therapeutic recreation. I would have the opportunity to work with mentally and physically disabled wonderful individuals. I actually really, really, really, really enjoy talking and working with disabilities, so this was an exciting thought of an adventure.
Choice C: Children's village, New York. When I interviewed with these people I realized that I didn't really want this one very much. It sounded incredibly fun and exciting, but my role wouldn't have been so much a recreation therapist as it would have been a play pal...which I love doing, but for my internship I really wanted to get a little more clinically involved and see what that is like.
So, by virtue of the interview alone, choice C was vetoed and got rid of itself. Choice B and A both offered me a position... Choice B was a no go, even though it was to be amazing...and so here I be. So for all those that shuddered at the thought of losing my presence from this happy valley, shudder no more. Now just to decide what to do in August....I think I'm feeling I'll be here....
Now that I have that decision out of the way, it relieved some stressfulness that I was feeling...I think it did anyway. School has been crazy busy. I think it is time to introduce the world to my friend, Sniffy the virtual rat. I spent an evening with Sniffy the other day. He was trouble if there ever was any. This was last week in the midst of decisions, and waiting for phone calls, four tests, a quiz or two, a late night of reading the wrong week's class material, and oh so much other stuff. And then I had Sniffy. He is a program for my learning behaviors class and we have been classically conditioning him to...oh boy, I don't even remember what we've been classically conditioning him to do, but this last week we switched to operant conditioning. My task was to condition my friend Sniffy to press the bar (that you can see right over him) above the hopper (where the food lands) in his little cage so that he could get a food pellet. You'd think that he would quickly oblidge since he was getting a good deal out of it, 'twas not the case. The manual that we have is supposed to teach us how to train Sniffy, it usually gives great directions. This busy night it was not so. I actually had to do two experiments with him. The first trained him that the hopper delivered food. I had that one out of the way in no time. I'm a great food-comes-from-hopper-trainer for Sniffy. The next task was to train him that every time he went up on his hind legs, the hopper delivered food, then that proximity to the hopper brought a higher possibility of food, then pressing the bar. I had a really hard time getting to that last one. It took an hour and a half, he kept untraining himself because he wouldn't go up on his hind legs next to the hopper, so he wouldn't get a pellet, so he quit going up on his hind legs. I was really grumpy at the virtual rat. However, after much suffering and frustratedness, he did what I wanted him to, and all was well. I can't imagine what others around me thought as I sat in the library with a rat on my screen just pressing my space bar for an hour and a half...hopefully no one noticed.
So that's my life...decisions, Sniffy, and...nope that's pretty much it. It's a pretty happy life.