Sounds like the first thing you should do is turn the A.I (artificial intelligence) off, or set it to something that works better for your party. A "jittery" mage is no benefit to the party.
I'd give you more precise instructions, but I don't have access to my IWD install atm (it's under Win98 and I'm booted into W2K, where it errors out if I try to start it). I'm sure that if you go to the Character Information screen, you should be able to find it (under "Customize", if it's the same as IWD2, which is what I'm actually playing currently).
In any case, welcome [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img] ! Nice to have another "adult" female around (I'm 40) amongst all these men and young'uns
!