Office Hours with Angelique and Toby, episode 15. Released December 10, 2025. 35 minutes.
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About this episode
Acupuncturist and longtime Chinese medicine educator Valerie (Val) Smith joins Toby Daly and Angelique Britt. Val has practiced since 1997, practices in Watertown, Massachusetts, and teaches Chinese medical theory and supervises clinic at the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA), where Angelique was one of her first-year students. She describes Beyond the Needle, her course on mindset and confident patient care for newer practitioners.
The conversation covers what to do when a patient says a treatment did not work, how new teachers can handle questions they cannot answer, why students struggle when they map Chinese medicine directly onto Western concepts, and why learning what is normal, in tongue, pulse, and in the individual patient, matters for diagnosis. Val also talks about boundaries such as late-cancellation policies, responding to strong emotions during intake, and the financial pressures on tuition-dependent acupuncture schools, including what NESA has gained as part of MCPHS.
Topics
Val's background as a practitioner and teacher
Beyond the Needle: mindset and confident patient care
When a patient says "it didn't work": getting curious about what changed
Advice for new teachers: you cannot know everything
Teaching Chinese medicine theory through clinical examples
Learning what is normal in diagnosis
Late-cancellation policies as business practice, applied with compassion
Strong emotions during intake and treatment
Single-degree acupuncture schools, tuition dependence, and NESA within MCPHS
Mentoring new graduates
A note for listeners: this is a conversation between licensed practitioners, offered for education, not as medical advice. Patient details have been kept general to protect privacy.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically from the published audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain errors in names and terms.
Welcome to Office Hours. Whether you're new to the acupuncture profession or have been at it for decades, this is the place where we discuss all things Chinese medicine and more. Join Toby Daly, a seasoned acupuncturist of the Saam tradition, and Angelique Britt, a nurse turned acupuncturist who is brand new to the field as they explore topics in and around the world of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. There's something for everyone here. Drop in anytime.
Toby: Hey Val, welcome to Office Hours. Thanks so much for being our guest. Do you mind giving a little bit of like some of your professional background before we get into our discussion so some of the viewers know where you're coming from?
Val: Sure, and thank you for the invite. I am very excited to be here. So I have been an acupuncturist since nineteen ninety-seven and I've been a teacher in various aspects since about nineteen ninety-eight. I started as a teaching assistant for materials and methods and taught intro to clinic for a while, supervising the clinic now. I teach th traditional Chinese medical theory and That I've taught for a long time. And what I found is that I really love teaching. Like I love understanding how people think and how to reach people when they think. So I love the medicine. I have a practice in Watertown. And I also love the teaching because I always have felt like if when you teach, you learn. It's a very synchronistic kind of thing. And so that's kind of what I'm about primarily. And I've just started expanding into creating courses through my business. And that's the one that we had been chatting about earlier, the beyond the needle. You know, we learn all these techniques and we learn how to treat a patient. But sometimes the beyond the needle is the mindset. Sometimes we don't get enough or learn enough about that because when we're in school, we're so focused on needling prescription and what everything means. That sometimes the patient to direction gets a little off.
Toby: So th that's like really focused on like the medical interview or something else beyond the needle
Val: Really the whole thing. So it's beyond the needle, developing mindset and removing distractions for confident patient care. And you know, what I find is that almost everything comes down to what is distracting us from being present or being curious or just being authentic in our whether it's teaching or patients or life in general. And that's what really fascinates me. And so it's partly about What happens when you what is a difficult conversation? What happens if your treatment is not treatment results are not as you expected or the patient's disappointed? But it's also about being okay with late fees. You know, sometimes we think they're punishment, but they're really good business practice. You know, it's like taking the charge out of things. So it's kind of wide ranging.
Toby: That sounds really valuable. Anything you can think about recently, maybe one example of like difficult conversations and how to navigate something like that?
Val: Sure. I this kind of this comes up, I mean, it's certainly come up in my clinic and it comes up in the students that I'm supervising in clinic. And a big one is if the treatment didn't get the results that you expected as a practitioner or the patient. And I've had interns come back in the room and be like, It didn't work And it's kinda like, Well, what does that mean exactly? Like, are you hearing the patient say it didn't work, but you're not investigating, you're not being curious about what does that mean? You know, does it mean that you treated someone for low back pain and it came back immediately and it her week was horrible? Or did you treat someone for low back pain? And they were actually able to garden for three hours. And after they were gardening, the back pain came back. But that's a win, you know, and then you try to stretch it out. So it's understanding that sometimes we make it about us instead of trying to clear our head and just being really present and saying, Well, Tell me what that means. Did you actually get no results or did you feel better and then you felt worse? And what does that mean? Like really kind of digging in to figure out how we need to change our treatment.
Toby: That's great. So really getting into the specifics of like how or how much it didn't work. That really is key. Well, I got another question for you too, but is a personal question is I'm a new Chinese medicine teacher. Do you have any do you have any advice for a new Chinese medicine teacher considering your couple of decades of experience teaching Chinese medicine?
Val: Absolutely. You don't know everything. There's no way that you can know everything for class. Well, I say because I when I first started teaching, I would fall asleep with the books opened on top of me and wake up at 3 a.m. And f I felt like I needed to be able to answer everything. And sometimes the best answer is not that you don't necessarily know, but let me get back to you. Yes. And that's okay. And also humor. You know, not trying to not
Toby: I already know that Val.
Val: Trying to help the students have fun with the material when it's can be really dense. Mm-hmm.
Toby: Do have a good Chinese medicine joke spell that I can use in my classes?
Val: Wish I did. I wish I did. That would be fantastic. If you find any, please send them my way. Usually the joke, and you may attest to this, Angelique, often the joke was a typo. Because I was famous for typos in my PowerPoints, and it used to stress me out. And then I was like, okay, that's a typo.
Toby: Okay. I'll definitely do that. Okay. I thought of a funny one from my Chinese medical school. We our anatomy professor, his name is Doctor Sue, really thick Mandarin accent. And so he was teaching us anatomy and we it was like pediatric, special pediatric anatomy and things like that. And in the lecture he was saying that, and then remember babies, it's really easy for them to get a penis stuck in their throat. Yeah. And so the whole class was aghast. We said, Dr. Sue, what are you talking about? He said, you know, the baby with the penis in the throat. And, you know, it was it was a few minutes of kind of sweating through it. And then we yeah, the peanut. Right. Peanut. Yeah, the peanut is easy to get in the suck at the throat. So yeah, this is sometimes Chai's Mesad is inadvertently uncomfortable and kinda funny. So yeah, I'll I'll I'll probably remember that for the rest of my life, Doctor Sue saying that. And not quite understanding why the why the audiences got suddenly cold and my god and c uncomfortable. So
Val: Teacher who would call the pubic bone the public bone go right by accident. It was just a translation for them. So we'd be like, what?
Toby: That's awesome. Angelique, what should we what else should we know about Val?
Angelique: So Val was the introduction to the TCM theory at NESA for my first year. And something that still stays with me that you did, and I know I've told you this about this before, but the first day of class as we all come into Zoom, because I was one of the COVID cohorts, do you teach it live now?
Val: It's hybrid program now, so I'm not in person anymore.
Angelique: In person. Okay. We all came into Zoom, but she had a PowerPoint playing and it was all of our names, all of us first years with our credential with like the L I C A C or the L E C at the end playing there and entering the class talking about how like that was our future and that we will get there and this is only the beginning. And I remember just say like just being so touched by that and how I don't know, that just it impacted me and it stays with me. That was such a small thing that you did, but it was so huge. And then just making the TCM theory fun during the whole time.
Val: Thank you for that. Yeah.
Toby: Now how'd you come up with that idea? I think that is beautiful. I remember being a student and looking at the licenses on the wall and thinking, I want one of those someday And that would have really touched me too if my name was how did you come up with that idea?
Val: Sure. Sometimes or sometimes almost always with me, it's something spontaneous. So I'm not sure exactly how I came up with that. It might have been around the white coat ceremony, because it used to be we had a white coat ceremony at the beginning of the second year before students went into clinic. But I think I always really felt Especially with Siri, it's such a heavy duty course and it's a course where you're defining new concepts, using new concepts, that people can be really like, What am I even doing here? Does this is ever gonna make sense? That it's really important to remind them of why they're there. No, and it's such a powerful reminder that they can go back to any time.
Toby: That's beautiful. Yeah, it was great. What do you think the most difficult theories for especially new students to understand?
Val: Yeah. I so there's I would say part of it is that idea of defining new concepts by new concepts, you know. Chi is all around us and there's six different kinds in the body and they all do different things. But you can't really see them. They just do their job and this modality works and that's how it works. Or another big one is I'll often tell students, particularly if you have a Western background, to kind of leave that at the door when you come into theory because it's human nature to translate into what we know and there's just not the linear translations between Chinese medicine and Western. And I think that can trip people up sometimes until they have more understanding of the larger medicine.
Toby: Yeah. It's just natural you want to try and build on something you already know rather than start at ground zero and build something back up. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What about any tricks for trying to explain those six types of qi? Any like you have any good metaphors or anything that really drive those ideas home?
Val: I don't know that I have a lot of metaphors, but I keep giving examples of what it looks like. Right. Like if the spleen transforming and transporting is impaired, it's likely part of it might be there's not enough gas. There's not enough warmth in the engine. So the water transformation is affected. How does that work with the spleen? It's more middle burner. Spleen wants to ascend. Everything goes downward. Loose stool. You know, those kinds of things I try to continue to give examples of what it looks like. And then as we move forward in the material, I keep referring back to the previous material.
Toby: That's awesome. Just to keep layering it, those ideas and then and then pair it up with actual biology. That's they had that makes sense.
Val: And even though, you know, there's a ton of material trying to really focus on the core concepts. Like if you really understand the core concepts, the rest will fall into place. Do I need to know what every shade of color means on the body? You know, at some point I need to understand that. But if I understand what healthy looks like, I'll be able to understand that there's a significant change from that. And if I understand the basic colors of the five element, I'll understand specific organs. And then things start to fall into place. So it's like trying to be really defined about the building blocks and how much they're like testing on or how much we're talking about in class versus what's in the book.
Toby: Do you ever differentiate too for the students like this is your textbook knowledge? But then based on my clinical experience, do you teach like that? You have to teach kind of hybrid like that too, or you're just preparing for the board so you don't you do both?
Val: Well, you know, I don't always think about preparing them for the boards and that could be a downfall of mine. But I do think about, you know, the we use Machiocha and it's a very voluminous book. And so I provide notes and I provide review notes. And then I allow the court, the class time, to use a PowerPoint and cover those concepts. But then we can go anywhere. You know, we can go anywhere that the students want to go in that particular class related to the material, because a lot of people have questions about this is going on in my life or I had this or a friend has this and what does that mean? You know, different classes often have different interests. And so I can talk about the types of qi. And then if someone has an a question about an illness and what would that look like, we can go there that they have the safety of their review notes, that I'm only going to take testing material from the review notes. And I feel like that allows them to relax with the material and also really have a clear frame of reference of what they need to be responsible for the exam. And, you know, I feel like the exam in some ways is a study tool too, to reinforce that material. So my questions are very straightforward.
Angelique: And you had those tests ahead of time where we would compete against each other online. That was always a good time.
Val: Right. That's right. I was the cahoot. Yeah, that was fun. I haven't done that in a while. All right, I'm gonna start doing that again. I'm gonna br I've been debating. I'm gonna bring it in. I started using Google polls because I use Zoom for the class and that's really helpful. But I feel like maybe Kahoot will be the review for the final, do some of that. Yeah,
Angelique: Caho. It was so much fun.
Toby: Was that like for pop quizzes or something or
Angelique: Yeah. So before the each of our exams, we would this program you could pick your own names. You didn't have to be, you know, I couldn't you didn't have to be yourself. You could people had crazy names. It was really kind of fun. And then we raced to answer the questions. So like by inputting however fast you did it, you got so many points. And then if after every question it would like show the ranking. So it was actually kind of fun to like spur some competition in a good nature sort of way.
Val: Everybody was I forgot about that. Everybody was really into that.
Angelique: Yeah, we yeah. Get into it. It's fun.
Val: Yeah, I am. Yeah, I'm going back to that.
Angelique: It was a good time.
Toby: Heck you were testing on be talking about before what is a healthy body. Do you do you have a good definition you give the students, Val, about that? What is a healthy body?
Val: It's funny 'cause we're just starting to do diagnostics and we're gonna start doing the asking portion. Often what I'll f of a couple of things, I focus on what's what's normal for that particular area. And often it's luster, moisture, appropriate temperature, think basic things like that. And then we also talk about what's normal for that person. Because if someone has a deep chronic illness, their norm might be a little different than someone who is pretty healthy. So I try to compare that. You know, what is a normal tongue, thin white tongue coat, that kind of thing. And I try to drive home. If they understand what that is, the normal tongue, the normal pulse, then they'll then you'll be able to say, Well, this isn't normal, let me figure it out.
Toby: Yeah, that's nice to know that bass line. I remember hearing I forget where I heard this from, but the definition of health for Chinese medicine is the body is totally silent. Yeah, that always that always really resonated with me. I thought that's really nice. When everything just humming along so beautifully, it's totally silent.
Val: I'm getting a lot of good information. I love that. I love that. Yeah. And I feel like there's an aspect of today's world, to I say today meaning, you know, the last ten or fifteen years even, where there's not a lot of silence. There's really not a lot of silence. And it's really impressive how even if our bodies are healthy, our minds are just really stressed and buzzing and not able to shut down. And it's an interesting time in our culture.
Angelique: It is in so many ways.
Toby: I take a little break from the culture. I was just down to Angelique, just before I go for ten days silence every six months or so. So in three or four days it'll be ten days of silence. So that is nice to take a break from twenty five.
Val: Are we out of that yet? Are we finished with twenty five yet?
Toby: Yeah, I don't know, but at least at least for ten days. At least for ten days I'm gonna take a break, go to some timeless space and then I gotta come back and face it. But I can face it a little bit better.
Val: Now, do you go somewhere when you take a break or do you just stay in your home and be silent or
Toby: Yeah, no, I can't with my family I don't think would allow that. So yeah, I go to a retreat center for that. Nice. That's nice, yeah. I don't pay for anything, look at a screen, prepare a meal, wash a dish. It's just nice. Everything just to be silent for those ten days is really is really special. I think it's always been special. This is a Buddhist tradition, so twenty five hundred a year tradition, but especially now, to counteract everything that's going on, I think that's that's really valuable. Okay. What about you about special self cultivation you do for Chinese medicine?
Val: You know, s I don't do silent retreats. But I know. But I you know, I've always I've always thought about, you know, how it how wonderful that would be, but I just I never get myself to do that. But I do try to, especially the last, you know, year or so, I try to log off all devices at a certain time. And that allows me to just be quiet. I try to walk and get enough rest.
Toby: That requires.
Val: But you I'm just like I'm just like my students. I get a lot going. So sometimes that doesn't happen. Which, you know, I think that our own foibles allow us more compassion and empathy for others, which I think is important.
Toby: Yeah, I think that's really important. Can I tell you my secret for going for ten days of meditation? How I do it. In six months ahead of time, I get all the interested parties to sign off on those dates. Six months ahead of time, right? And then everyone signed off because now it's coming up and all the interested parties are like, no, but we got to do this. They got I'm like, remember we signed off on it. So that's my secret. Six months from now
Val: Signed awful.
Toby: You just okay that time with everybody and then and then 'cause always as it comes gets closer and closer then everyone's like, no, but we need this you know. I like that. So I think about it as putting like a big rock in the river and then if it's big enough, everything goes around that.
Val: I like that. You know, one of my forms of self care, I love live music, I love theater, and it just kind of fills my soul. But it made me think when you were talking about the, you know, signing up ahead of time. When I was in when I was studying acupuncture, and I still do it now, I would get season tickets to a series of shows with a friend and we would get the tickets and I would not look at what the shows are. And I always called it planned spontaneity. So I knew I was going there. It was planned. But I didn't like I looked briefly at the list. I never looked at the content and people would think I was insane. What are you doing this weekend? I'm going to a show. What show are you going to? I don't know. How do you not know? I don't know. I'll find out when I get there.
Toby: Great idea. Yeah. That's a great idea.
Val: And it was really satisfying.
Toby: I do a small version of that like a movie. I try not to let myself see the trailer of it, you know, 'cause I don't want to know anything about it. But that's really big time. You know you don't even know what the movie is. So that's that's awesome. You don't do that anymore?
Val: I don't know. I still do it. It carried on from when I was in acupuncture studies to current day. I still have a subscription and still it's like, what show are you going to? I don't know. But every now and again a friend of mine will say, Wow, that's brilliant. I love that. Yeah. Because I know there's a part of me that really wanted to be able to be spontaneous. And I was so overloaded with school and work that I just have to do this. So I book it ahead of time. But I still felt like I was being spontaneous because I didn't know what I was going to say.
Toby: Yeah, but that's great. Again, yeah, once you have that time carved out, you can be spontaneous at that time. That's awesome. That's a that's a good antidote for twenty five. Mm-hmm.
Angelique: Well, I'm curious about the course that you put together. So who is this for and who would you recommend taking it?
Val: So this course is really for new practitioners and it's been kind of a brainchild, something I've wanted to do for a very long time, because I can see some students do great interpersonally in clinic and others have different challenges because most people who go into this field want to care for people, but Not everybody has all the interpersonal or say customer service tools or strength in different areas. It came from I worked in a hotel industry before I went to acupuncture school. And so, you know, I did a lot of customer service. So it was a little bit easier for me to figure things out. So this is really for call it the rest of the story because you've, you know, studied, you can deliver a good treatment, but there's something kind of missing. I mean it might be that somebody calls at the last minute and cancels and it really upsets you. Like if it really upsets you, we're taking it personally. A. And B, maybe our policy isn't working for us. Or maybe we're not enforcing our policy. Part of our self-care too is taking care of ourselves. And you know, I always talk to people about how often we look at things like late cancel fees or no show fees as a punishment. Like somehow innately we feel we're punishing our patients. And sometimes they feel like it's a punishment, like it triggers a bad kid feeling. But it's really just a business policy. And the other piece to that, if someone has late canceled or no show, there's usually somebody that's trying to get into CU for treatment that isn't going to get care. So it's not about blaming or shaming, which we like to do in this culture, but it's more about, you know, somebody else really needed that spot and they weren't able to get it. So, you know, having good boundaries around that from the very beginning is helpful. And certainly You know, also we're the boss of us. So if, you know, I had someone who was for totally forgot about her treatment the other day and she had an emergency with her pregnancy, I'm not gonna charge her a late fee. I have a right to adjust as needed. But it's also important because it sets it sets good energetic boundaries with people and ourselves. You know, so things like that. You know, the idea of navigating difficult conversations and, you know, if someone has very intense energy, like, it didn't go the way I want it, or there's a very big emotion that comes up. Some people are not comfortable with that. So it's how can we take away kind of our ego, like making it about us or being fearful and just really clear our head and be curious. You're like, what's happening here? I don't have to be afraid of it. What's happening here? What does it mean that the results weren't as expected? Like what What happened? What didn't happen? What's going on with the person who's got strong emotions? Maybe we just need to sit and let them come out. Maybe they're processing emotions because it's a solid treatment and not processing emotions because we did something wrong. And I think sometimes as a culture we go to the shame game or the blame game or I did something wrong. And so it's a lot of that. Also talking a little bit about self-care for the practitioner of how do we start our day? How do we end our day? How does that impact our day with our patients?
Toby: How do you have the students differentiate between a response to treatment and just the patient just trying to get some emotions out? How do you nav have them navigate that?
Val: Well, I feel like they can be intertwined. Like if you're doing an intake and emotions come up, then it could be that something is triggered. And the other piece to that, I always tell my students that, you know, some people are dealing with trauma. Some people are dealing with things that they don't want to talk about. So we don't need to get the detail. We need to understand how it impacts their life. And then we get a lot of information about what organs might be involved. You know, are they curling up in a ball? Are they really angry? And so sometimes if someone gets emotional during an intake, most often it's just listening. You know? If someone gets emotional on the table, I'll often, you know, this is me, I'll often say, Is this a good cry or a bad cry? Like, are you processing something or is this uncomfortable? Do you want me to take the needles out? Would you be more comfortable with it? And more often than not, they're processing. So it's kind of understanding and just being really Direct, asking questions that we might not be comfortable asking, but now we're the practitioner. So it's important that we ask those questions to understand what's going on with our patient so that we can best serve them.
Toby: Yeah, I think that's a that's a great way of doing it. Ask the basin directly, is this going in the right direction? 'Cause they'll know, I mean, especially if they're a good reporter, they'll be able to tell you, they'll be able to articulate right direction. That's that's really key.
Angelique: Goodness, I feel like I need to take your course, Val. And I'm like, I have a late policy that I don't enforce. I have a no show policy that I don't enforce. Yeah. Cause I yeah. Listening to you, I'm like, man, I maybe need to relook at that. Cause I had that same thing. I don't want to punish people. I don't want to make them feel bad, but you're right.
Val: Were taught that it's a punishment as opposed to it's impeding someone else to get treatment. And that's not in a blaming way. It's just like, let's make room for somebody else. Or maybe if you're always late, it might be your pathology, but I'm still gonna stay within the treatment time, which is fine.
Angelique: I do. Yeah. I just thought it'd force the late. Yeah.
Val: And if Yeah.
Toby: I was thinking too, yeah, I still so uncomfortable with my late policies, cancellation policies, even accepting money, right, that I hired someone to do it for me. I know, but we you should tell your students, right, this may be something you'll never get out of, right? So you have to you have to bring something else in. So yeah, I still feel uncomfortable with that. Again, that's that's my workaround.
Val: Nothing wrong with that. We have to do what's right for us. Yeah. And whatever feels good to us is what is right.
Angelique: Yeah. Yes.
Toby: I feel like it's it's almost two different things to be done there, right? Is like the really mundane things like taking money, making next appointments, and then trying to treat the patient at a really high level, you know, like really try and coax them into a really big state of health. I feel like I'm I'm good at that the first part and not very good at the second part. So I just have to outsource that. I think yeah, a lot of people can do both. I like that. But yeah, but maybe tell your students, Val, that some people can't, right? Like I did try for years and it this is my workaround because I just I still feel uncomfortable with that.
Val: I think that's a great workaround.
Angelique: Do you have an assistant, Val, at your clinic?
Val: Don't with my teaching schedule and my work schedule, I work three days a week. So I share space with another acupuncturist and then someone who does it's like she's got the magical room. She does Reiki and some massage and some channeling and it's like, you know, all different things and we really work well with each other, but we're not always there at the same time and it's a smaller space. So I don't I don't have an as I don't want to spend the money for an assistant too, 'cause it's just like such a short period of time.
Toby: Val, do mind if we switch gears and talk a little bit more about Chinese medicine institutions? We were talking, Angelique and our last episode, we were talking about there's like some by the time people see this, they'll probably know about it. There's some kind of breaking news in the Bay Area here. One of our major schools, the one in Berkeley, AIMC, is closing and they had a sister school in Austin, Texas, also closing. That's eight schools in about two years in the US. And so since you're associated with NESA, maybe you have some institutional knowledge. Any sense about what's going on with this with the profession. I'm I'm deeply concerned, but I'm so unsure what's happening. Yeah.
Val: I thought I saw something about that in one of the social media groups and I wasn't sure what the initials were for. Excuse me. So I was at NESA in many different iterations. And I believe what happened with NESA, what happens with a lot of the schools that have closed, not only acupuncture but like optometry and dental schools, they're a single degree school for the most part. And typically they might be a single degree and they rely on tuition. Which can fluctuate a great deal. And that's really one of the reasons why NESA started looking around New England School of Acupuncture years ago a number of years ago to see if we couldn't join in with a larger institution. And that was another period of time. I want to say it was twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen, where schools were starting to close also. I really feel that we I feel it was a good decision to join Mass College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. And part of that is There was no push by MCPHS to make any overall changes to the program. I mean, they basically said, we don't know anything about acupuncture. You know about acupuncture. We want to just have your pro this program be one of our schools under MCPHS. But I do think that it's the single degree schools that have a problem and that's part of it. That they might not have endowments. They might haven't been they might have been around for a long time as far as acupuncture schools go, but less of a history and less, you know, multidegre and deployment. Diplomas and things like that. And I'm not sure about the school in the Bay Area, but I feel like that's been a theme. Yeah.
Toby: I remember reading about that. Almost every school has some sort of endowment, except for I think no Chinese medicine school has any endowment, right? So yeah, like you're saying, that's hyper vulnerable to any fluctuation because it's pure income from tuition. There's nothing to lean on. If it gets if it if it starts to dip at all, then there's no there's no way to recover from that. That's an interesting point. For my school, ACTCM, that was a San Francisco school, they did merge with a much larger school and then fell apart anyway. So maybe even that's not a guarantee.
Val: Well, I wonder also if Mass College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is a health science school. Hm. I don't know what the other college merged with. It was
Toby: California Institute of Integral Studies. So it was like psychology and some other things. So I mean it was hell it was health adjacent. Yeah, may but not but yeah, not maybe not to the level that yours is. So anyways, I'm so pleased. Angelique was saying last time that the cohort's even maybe the biggest one you guys ever had coming through right now. So that's that sounds promising.
Val: Yeah, I think there's there's about forty one or forty two students in this first year cohort.
Angelique: I had heard through the grade fine there was like sixty to start with, so maybe that is not true.
Val: I don't know that there were sixty, but it's still a large cohort. Cause when you think about it, did you cut you came in on twenty? Twenty one. Okay. I always call the twenty and twenty one like the badasses because you started studying at a time with such unknown
Angelique: Twenty one.
Val: You know, we might the world may have opened back up, but there was such an unknown entity or what's gonna happen next. How are we gonna, you know, integrate and stuff? And yet you came anyway because, you know, it's it's the passion that we bring, it's the reason we're there. But it always was very impressive to me, you know, people just going through and such with masks on or
Angelique: Yeah, we couldn't do tongue diagnosis for a while for that reason. I think my cohort was somewhere around forty as well. So solid. So it's staying solid. Yeah, it's good. Especially in light of other schools closing. I'm glad that we're still having a steady stream of folks wanting to come into the profession. The school's staying solid.
Val: And Mass College, a pharmacy, just celebrated I think they just celebrated their two hundredth anniversary. So they've been around for a long time and I think that helps. Yeah. You know, as far as financial just like having a good system in place.
Toby: And when I came to visit too, your campus is beautiful too and then it's cool in that kind of downtown area too. So I really liked it. So I th I think that helps having nice space too.
Val: Yeah, I agree. I agree. And there's a lot of resources, you know, like being just a single degree freestanding school, it's almost like not that there's a hustle to it, but a lot of people are doing a lot of different things and you're trying to figure out how to take care of things and have resources. And being part of a larger institution, there's so many resources. You know, somebody needs counseling, here's who you contact. Somebody needs tutoring, here's who you contact. There's no let me look around and see what's what we can find, which I think was a huge difference.
Toby: Yeah, maybe that's the model going forward, right? Something with an endowment, something that's been around for two hundred years, right? If you can meld these things together.
Val: Because Chinese medicine will be around forever.
Toby: But it needs schools or something you know, apprenticeship or something it's gotta it just not by itself. It's gotta come through people. So I love this profession, so I just always a little worry about it. So I agree. It's that's nice to hear NESA's doing so well.
Val: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like you know, I think it's how life goes too. I think there'll be another iteration where schools start to open up again. It maybe not right now, because of the financial situation in the world and a lot of unknowns still. But I think that will start to grow again. I don't think there's there's an end to new institutions because we're a scrappy group. We're gonna make it happen, you know?
Toby: Scrappy, passionate group. I think I think that's that's definitely us.
Val: You know, like when I think scrappy, I'm like, Yeah, we just gotta get it done. We just gotta figure it out, you know. Yeah. We don't need it necessarily a lot, but we'll get it done.
Toby: All right, now anything else on your mind today? No.
Val: Well, I think I'm good. I will mention that I want to offer your listeners a discount for this course. Because it is like a it's a passion project. It's something that I want to be able to give back to the first time practitioners. So it's beyond the needle. And if you're the first five people who might be listening are interested, they can email me, journey to wellbeing at hopmail dot com. And just put in office hours and I'll send them a link. And what I'm doing initially, because I'm this is kind of a learning process for me too, but I'm also including a mentoring session along with the course. So we'll see how that grows. But I want to offer that to your listeners and they can the class should be had to, you know, look at the technical side. So it took a little bit longer for me, but it will be launched definitely next week. And they can just reach out. Yeah.
Angelique: So Toby would put that up on the screen, her email address.
Toby: Yes, I'll I'll definitely have the graphics department put that up. Nice for us. Val this has been kind of a theme of Angelique S and I's discussion too, is how important mentorship is. So th I'm so glad that's that's part of your program. That's great.
Val: Yeah, I think it's very important. I think it's important for pre and I think a lot of practitioners do give back. But I think it's important to be there to show the ropes to people and just be available. You know, our we have an assistantship program at New England School of Acupuncture where people go off site to observe. And, you know, when I was studying, you would kind of try to f find somebody that you could assist and then you would put your hours in. And now there are site there are sites that want to cultivate relationships, not just take assistance, but cultivate relationships that could lead to a job in their clinic. And that is something really new and it's really wonderful and it's growing. Yes.
Toby: Yeah, my heart always goes out to new graduates, right? So I think that's fantastic, right? Already be able to have contacts in the profession, I think that's fantastic. Yeah. That's great. Well, we'll let this leave it here for right now. Sure. It's it's been great to have you as our guest here on Office Hours.
Val: Well this has been so much fun. I so appreciate the invite and I've so enjoyed my time here.
Angelique: Educating.
Toby: All right, everyone, take good care.
Angelique: Everybody.
