This week, Lily Paff will complete her music therapy internship at Dynamic Music Services, Inc. We wanted to spotlight her accomplishments throughout her internship and share about her experiences with our company over the last few months.
Lily completed her music therapy coursework at the University of Louisville as a vocal primary and graduated in May of this year. She began her internship at Dynamic in April of this year, where she was supervised by our hospice coordinator and director of operations Lauren Ebersold, MT-BC. Lily had the opportunity to work with other music therapists during her internship at Dynamic, including Kelli McGovern, MT-BC, NMT, Rebecca Winebarger, MT-BC, and Emily Theurer, MT-BC in addition to Lauren. She also observed at other local music therapy facilities to continue expanding her understanding of how different each music therapist and music therapy session can be.
Lily told us that her favorite type of music experience to facilitate in sessions was guided relaxation experiences, “primarily because they provide grounding opportunities for myself as well as the clients. Also, as most experiences are in music therapy, it is adaptable, and there are endless types of guided relaxation/meditations to use!” Lily also enjoys facilitating “blackout/erasure poetry songwriting, because it brings about new ideas and interpretations every time”. Of all the songs she had the opportunity to utilize in sessions, she shared the following as being some of her favorites throughout her internship:
- “Look Up” by Joy Oladokun
- “Good Riddance (The Time of Your Life)” by Green Day
- “I’ve Been Everywhere” by Johnny Cash
Dynamic believes in prioritizing self-care, both for our professionals and our interns and students. For Lily, taking care of herself outside of internship hours meant making or listening to music that was not internship or music therapy-related, taking walks, and watching comfort movies or shows.
For many music therapists, internship is when they find who they are as therapists. Lily told us she was “very grateful for the variety of opportunities” she was given to decide how she wants to work as a therapist. She “learned so much about working in a private practice and primarily treating people on the waiver” and said it was “helpful to have learning opportunities about various parts of the job that exist outside of sessions.” She “learned about the various ways to advocate” and had the “opportunity to practice advocating” for her clients and their needs with their teams and family members. In relation to herself, she “learned more about personal boundaries, self-care, and advocating” for herself in order to “offer the best care for the clients” she works with. Lastly, she learned that in music therapy, “every session does not need to be ‘life-changing’ or ‘amazing’ for the client to reach their goals.”
Another requirement of the DMS internship is to write a case study on a chosen client and present findings to the team. Lily chose to research and present on exploring music and absolute pitch as a means of communication for clients with autism, using data from two different clients she got to work with during her internship to inform her case study, and our team all benefitted from the information she was able to share with us and to help inform our practice going forward when working with this population.
Thank you, Lily, for choosing Dynamic to do your internship with and we are grateful to have had you with us! Wishing you all the best in your future endeavors.
