rpanons | Don't bother

Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I did a full time program, which is one year; a lot of people do part time and it takes two. In my state, that's about 650 hours of training. The hours requirement varies (a lot) state by state, from no licensing in VT at all to over 1000 in NY, but 600 is more or less standard.

Massage school was one of the best experiences of my life. No joke. I was in a small class of around 15 - 20 people, the same for every class I had the whole year, and we got really close. It's truly an eclectic group of people spanning all ages and races and backgrounds, but one thing's for sure, you can't be a massage therapist if you aren't a giving, compassionate person somewhere in there. You just drop out of the course. About 1/3 of the people that showed up to day one ended up graduating.

As for actual training, we had academic classes-- skeletal and muscular systems, pathologies as relevant for massage, orthopedic assessment, how to guide meditation, maintaining boundaries, business fundamentals-- and hands on practicals. It was maybe 1:1 in ratio for academic to hands on. We all practiced on each other in one big room, which means we all got really good at putting our clothes on and off under a sheet on the table. Suffice to say no one survives massage school with any sort of body consciousness.

For the second and third trimester, I had clinic, which means I saw paying clients twice a week, about three of them each time. They were drastically discounted sessions since we were students, about $30 (industry standard right now is $60 - $70), and it was a really invaluable experience. It felt a little like throwing us in the deep end since I saw my first client four months after starting the program, but it worked out well.

Oh, and we also had to do log hours, which is basically practicing on friends and family and recording it, every week. At the end of the year you take the state licensure exam and, if you want, the NCBTMB exam, the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. The NCBTMB will try to sell you that they're the national certification level but, and this is important, there is no national certification level. They are a private business with their own standard and they make money off of you. They also will try to say that clients will appreciate you being held to their standards since they're higher than most states'. I've never in five years had a client ask me about my certification, just what school I went to.

tl;dr forever on this topic lol.

This is really interesting, thank you!

You're welcome!

Don't bother

Re: Licensed massage therapist

Re: Licensed massage therapist

Re: Licensed massage therapist