Hello everyone! I graduated in December 2022 with my bachelors in Music Therapy. I did my internship in a private practice and I was able to provide music therapy to many different populations including kids in schools with cognitive disabilities, ALF (specifically memory care floors), one on one neurodivergent pts of all ages, pediatric daycares for children in medical care, and even got to do some adapted music lessons. I loved being able to provide therapy and help people through music during my six month internship BUT i was extremely burned out by the end of it. I felt like some places that I was required to provide therapy to, were not therapeutic at all and I was just performing. For example, some of the ALF I would go to… had over 30 pts where less than 10 were actually enagged and benefiting from music therapy, the others were sleeping, screaming/talking over, or being disruptive. The pts that were engaged would even argue at times with others that would be disrespectful. I asked my supervisor multiple times if this is okay to which he responded we can’t pick and choose who gets to have music therapy… in my opinion having a smaller group of pts that would engage and actually benefit from music therapy would be better than just trying to give a session to 30 pts where more than half don’t care what I have to say. It felt like performing most of the time. A lot of the places I went to felt like it was for the paycheck rather than for therapeutic benefits for the pts.

This example happened multiple times with different facilities for over 3 months. I began to dislike providing services to ALF and memory care, and asked to change populations and just focus on kids or other populations the MT’s had, to which I was told I was gonna work with all my ALF groups (more than 5) for one more month.

I then was given multiple kids to work with my last month and was expected to just know what to do by just observing one session with each pt. I had only worked with one kid with ASD for Practicum/clinicals before. My last month was fine and I actually enjoyed working with kids way more than working with older adults, but i still felt like I was catching up all the time. I passed internship with an A and was told I was ready to be an MT. But after graduation i just felt lost and also a huge sense of relief to be done with my MT internship and MT as a whole. I thought I didn’t want to pursue a career in it because of bad experiences with internship. I didn’t want to even take the certification exam. But now I am rethinking it all and sometimes I miss it. Did anyone go through something similar? What was your process? Do you think I should take the certification exam and try a different work setting that’s not private practice?

Any feedback or comments are appreciated. Thank you!