and then i got a job...

PCS offered me the job while I was up in Seattle, and I'm SOOOO glad to have a steady job again, and even more excited that it's one in my field and not a secretary job or something- or dental assisting- yuck!

Provo Canyon School is a residential treatment facility that takes in kids from ages 12 to 17 who have behavioral problems- most of them are diagnosed as severely depressed or bipolar, on top of ADHD, anger issues, post traumatic stress syndrom, abusive pasts, etc. It is an interesting and scary crazy place sometimes... I learned everything and more than a person would ever want to know about suicide, the way these kids will do it, the other crazy things they do (drinking all the hand sanitizer to get 'drunk', giving each other tattoos with whatever they can find, etc), they aren't allowed to wear shoelaces, belts, they can't have pencils cause they will use the metal ring at the eraser to cut themselves, we can't let them be in the bathroom more than 2 minutes before we go in with them, and we have to do head counts every 15 minutes... i'll be a team coach, which means i'll be with them from when they get out of school (the facility is accredited as a high school and a hospital, which means insurance helps most of the families pay the $300/day bill that comes with having a kid in the place for, on average, 10 months) until they go to bed... so i'll go to therapy with them some days, get them doing their homework, get them to dinner, do their activities with them (sometimes they go on vacation to lake powell!), just keep them in order, talk to them, keep them safe from themselves and each other, etc. In the last 3 days of training I learned everything about the place, first aid and cpr recertification, and how to do restraints and what to do when they attack you. It's gonna be great.