Sigh of relief...for now

I went to bed Friday night, not knowing if I would have a job this week.  During the last month and a half, the newspapers and media have shifted their focus from Charlie Sheen to the looming government shutdown.  Every two weeks, a shutdown was looming as we waited for Congress to pass a budget or a continuing resolution.

During the first shutdown threat, I received a email from the agency that I have guaranteed hours with, announcing that if the government closes, they would be closing- 98% of their contracts are with the federal government.  In the coming weeks, I received emails from other interpreting agencies, detailing their plans during the government shutdown- essentially the message was "if the government closes and cancels assignments, they won't pay our contracts and we can't pay you."  With no indication of how long a shutdown would last, I was obviously concerned about the long-term.

While interpreters have more flexibility and options than other government employees and contractors, we would be hurting as well.  There is always medical, community, and college work, but now the market would be saturated with interpreters, and only so much work to go around.  I made the decision that I would not accept any assignments that I normally would not consider or consider myself qualified for (i.e. medical, mental health, legal).  I was already interpreting a class at the community college and when requests were sent out for the second eight-week session, in the midst of shutdown threats, I immediately accepted a second class, bringing my weekly total to eight hours.  Last Friday, I received a request for an all day Saturday assignment (14 hours!), and I accepted that assignment as well (I was qualified for the assignment, but working all day is necessarily my first choice on a Saturday), as Congress had yet to reach a decision.  Fortunately, just before midnight, Congress approved another continuing resolution.

This entire experience has made me more thankful for my job and what I have, but also served as a reminder that no one has true job security.  If the government did shut down, we were going to be better off than most- my husband would still have his county job,  but my hours dropping from 30 hours/ week to 8 hours/ week was certainly going to be difficult.  The future is uncertain and we will continue to save for that "raining day."  In the meantime, I will be counting my blessings.

TerpExpo

I spent the last two days at TerpExpo (staying overnight Friday), enjoying time with my friends and colleagues and taking advantage of a great professional development opportunity.  TerpExpo is a traveling interpreter conference that rotates cities throughout the year, with the goal of providing interpreters the opportunity to engage in professional development and earn CEUs at a reasonable price.  Although I only attended Friday and Saturday, those two days were jammed packed, as I earned 1.95 CEUs:

Friday
Facing Your Interpreting Nightmares Through Safe & Supportive Peer Supervision: Dr. Alan Marcus
Ethical Fitness: Shannon Simon
My Father's Gift: Windell Smith, Jr.
ASL Trivia Night: Keith Wann & Crom Saunders

Saturday
Team Interpreting: Shannon Simon
Creating Classifers:  Crom Saunders

I have to admit that I attended the Ethical Fitness and Team Interpreting in preparation for two VRID events that I am putting together.  I will be leading another Ethics and NIC Interview discussion group in April and am considering how to re-vamp the discussion group, to better benefit the participants, based on past feedback.  I was looking for another perspective on the NIC Interview Rubric and the ethical decision making process.   I did not get that out of this workshop, however, there was still great group discussion on ethical dilemmas and I was reminded of several great resources.  The biggest take-away for me was that the root of the word "confidentiality" is confide.  The presenter expressed that the profession has taken confidentiality in one direction, rather than acknowledge the need to talk about our work.  While it is important to maintain confidentiality about specifics, sometimes interpreters do need to talk about our work in order to improve our product and decision-making process.  I was disappointed in the Team Interpreting workshop because there was a heavy emphasis on listing best practices, rather than spending time discussing how to address and solve team interpreting issues.  However, this workshop did help me better conceptualize what I was looking for and give me ideas for the VRID Community Dialogue on Team Interpreting.

I enjoyed the other workshops, but my favorite was Dr. Alan Marcus's "Facing Your Interpreting Nightmares."  An interpreter friend in New York is involved with peer supervision in her area, and the concept has intrigued me, especially after taking a course in mental health interpreting and learning about supervision in the mental health profession.  Peer supervision goes hand-in-hand with Shannon Simon's point about "confide."  During this workshop, we discussed the format of peer supervision and practiced mirroring.  Throughout the workshop, from the fish bowl discussions to mirroring practice, all of us had to take a look at each other and ourselves.  Peer supervision is not about problem-solving but rather, lending support as an individual works through a scenario.  Often times, as interpreters, we work in a vacuum and have a sense of isolation.  However, there is comfort in knowing that other interpreters have experienced similar situations.  Even with situations that we have not experienced, there are common feelings of powerless-ness, frustration, exhaustion, anger, anxiety- but a support group can lend the emotional support.  This workshop has increased my desire to set-up peer supervision in my area.

I immensely enjoyed the time with my colleagues, but I am glad to be home!

A follow-up discussion on consumer education

A few weeks ago, I wrote my response to the YouTube videos that have taken the Facebook interpreting community by storm.  However, in the past few weeks, I have been reminded that consumer education does not only extend to the hearing participant.  Within the past two weeks, I have had the opportunity to educate both hearing and Deaf consumers about the role of the interpreter, the interpretation process, and Code of Professional Conduct.

One of my ITP professors advised us to have scripts prepared to address potential (and sometimes) common situations.  When the hearing participant asked me a question, I was able to reach in my mental tool box, pull out my script and encourage her to direct that particular question to the Deaf participant, delineating my role as an interpreter, rather than an expert on the Deaf participant.  Another script that I have used repeatedly with hearing individuals, particularly schedulers and points of contact, came in handy with a Deaf consumer- the importance of preparation for assignments.

Although Deaf consumers tend to have more experience with interpreters than many of the hearing consumers we work with, there may be times to educate them as well.  When everyone is on the same page, interpreting assignments are much smoother and the interactions are more successful and effective.  And of course, remember the CPC and demonstrate professionalism and respect for the consumers.