I helped my family plant a couple of saplings today in our back yard. They were special saplings ... two different types of apple trees. One was a Honeycrisp and the other was a Red Nova (kind of like a cross between a Cortland and a McIntosh).
They came to us in a box, perfectly packed for shipment, with the root ball protected in a plastic bag with slightly moist compost around it. And the saplings themselves looked to be little more than sticks. Long, bumpy sticks with a few tiny buds starting to poke through the tender bark. Below these tiny shoots, on each "tree", you could just barely make out the place where the grower had grafted the fruit-bearing portion of the tree onto the original sapling (the one attached to the root ball). That graft, apparently, was our guarantee that the tree would produce the type of apples for which we had ordered the trees... if that makes any sense.
It will take a couple of years for these little sticks to resemble trees, and to produce blossoms in the spring. They will need to be staked before this fall to grow straight and tall, and they will need to be covered in burlap before the snow falls this year to protect them from the howling winds and deep snow. They have already undergone quite a process to get to the point they were when we received them, and they will need to be carefully tended until they can stand against whatever Mother Nature throws at them.
I kind of feel like I am at that stage as a budding counselor. I feel bare, but I am showing growth; most of the growth is underneath, and I feel quite vulnerable.
To continue the analogy, even though I have not graduated from my Master's program, I have already done some growing and have experienced some cutting and healing - just like the graft that guarantees success - and I have started to send out a few tentative leaf-tips. I feel as though I've been planted in fresh soil, and part of me feels like I need to have support as I face the next year of my life when I will do the most growing I will have ever done. Hands-on experience is far superior to book learning - and I sure feel like I have done enough reading and studying to last me a while! So now it is time to move onward and put what I have learned into practice (pun intended.)
My practicum has been approved, and I will be working on my Learning Plan over the next month or so with my future supervisor, in order to start my hands-on work in September. It is so surreal to realize that a year from now, I will have finished my practicum and will be taking my final course in the program. What an amazing ride it's going to be!
There are still a few things to iron out between now and September, but these will fall into place as time goes on. I am looking forward to continuing my studies, to the helping hands and hearts of those who will be my "stakes" throughout the growing process, and to new growth in the meantime.
The blossoms will come soon enough. I'm just taking it one day at a time. :)
They came to us in a box, perfectly packed for shipment, with the root ball protected in a plastic bag with slightly moist compost around it. And the saplings themselves looked to be little more than sticks. Long, bumpy sticks with a few tiny buds starting to poke through the tender bark. Below these tiny shoots, on each "tree", you could just barely make out the place where the grower had grafted the fruit-bearing portion of the tree onto the original sapling (the one attached to the root ball). That graft, apparently, was our guarantee that the tree would produce the type of apples for which we had ordered the trees... if that makes any sense.
It will take a couple of years for these little sticks to resemble trees, and to produce blossoms in the spring. They will need to be staked before this fall to grow straight and tall, and they will need to be covered in burlap before the snow falls this year to protect them from the howling winds and deep snow. They have already undergone quite a process to get to the point they were when we received them, and they will need to be carefully tended until they can stand against whatever Mother Nature throws at them.
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Photo by
Matthias Cooper
from
Pexels
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To continue the analogy, even though I have not graduated from my Master's program, I have already done some growing and have experienced some cutting and healing - just like the graft that guarantees success - and I have started to send out a few tentative leaf-tips. I feel as though I've been planted in fresh soil, and part of me feels like I need to have support as I face the next year of my life when I will do the most growing I will have ever done. Hands-on experience is far superior to book learning - and I sure feel like I have done enough reading and studying to last me a while! So now it is time to move onward and put what I have learned into practice (pun intended.)
My practicum has been approved, and I will be working on my Learning Plan over the next month or so with my future supervisor, in order to start my hands-on work in September. It is so surreal to realize that a year from now, I will have finished my practicum and will be taking my final course in the program. What an amazing ride it's going to be!
There are still a few things to iron out between now and September, but these will fall into place as time goes on. I am looking forward to continuing my studies, to the helping hands and hearts of those who will be my "stakes" throughout the growing process, and to new growth in the meantime.
The blossoms will come soon enough. I'm just taking it one day at a time. :)
