Me: A 2018 self-assment


About me: A review over personal changes from the summer of 2017 to 2018

It is not an exaggeration when people say things can change a lot in a year, when looking back on myself and how much I changed over the course of a short summer shadowing experience pales in comparison to the changes that happen over a year. After my experience at the office in Wexford, I realized a lot about the things that I needed to still learn. One of those being personal experience and relatability, something that can be acknowledged in school but worked on out in the real world. Realizing that I was a small fish in a big pound really helps with one's personal drive to succeed in their field of interest. There are so many positions in the mental health field that will benefit the hurting people who come to this area for help. Yet, they are exclusive positions that take extra grit and determination to achieve. Coming out of my summer Magellan, my professors starting the probing questions of what is next, what do you want to do, who do you want to help? I had to recognize that I had seen the work of a lot of these positions and I wanted a bit of each, something that I had never thought possible to have before that year. Coming to this conclusion was a big part of working with Dr. Shelesinger, sitting down and talking to her about how she came to the decision of what she wanted to do. It was also calming to hear that it was perfectly fine at my stage in my career to not know everything about my future was fine.

Unfortunately, I have never been one to let that calming answer be enough for me, so I engaged in the activity most students come to dread half way through their college years, personal research. I looked at degrees, how long they took, what I would be able to do, how much I would be able to bill my patients for and for what kind of services. Then it came to evaluating my current academic status seeing if what I had accomplished was enough to even get me to higher levels of schooling. There are high levels of education that will take on more students for their academic year over others, such as a Masters program or MST program. Both of which had been options for me at one point during my interests in the psychology field, now though, my sights had been set higher. After a year of more psychology classes, looking at psychotherapies and counseling and completing my capstone, which involved designing and completing my own scientific experiment. I realized what I would like to do. After completing my four years at Washington & Jefferson College I would like to go on to complete a PsyD program at a graduate school. A PsyD is a Doctorate in Psychology and would give me the ability to be a clinical therapist and charge for my services if I were to choose to work under a private practice and not under a third party provider. Then when I get older if I were to choose to leave this field of practicing I could look to work at a college and teach as my degree would give me the licensing to do so.

Even with most things figured out, during my final year at school I still need to finish up a few things to have my life more in my control. The first of which is taking the GRE which is a standardized test that most graduate schools require their applicants to take in order to have a complete view of the student and their academic standing adequately reviewed. It is a complicated test for it appears to measures one's verbal, writing and mathematics skills when in reality it is truly testing one's cognitive abilities. Something that may not have been honed in college. It is a test you have to prepare for, but thankful, it is something W&J gives its students an advantage since they have a professor, Dr. Klitz, who gives lectures on the test and helps prepare any students looking to take it, an edge up on the harder questions and confidence to pass the whole test with flying colors.


Coming to the end of the summer of 2018, a lot of things have changed but some things have stayed the same. I still love the psychology field and look forward to dedicating my life to helping the hurting in this mental health field.  Even with the hardships of being in the mental health filed, my determination to stay with this program and exceed its expectations has not stopped. A year later from finishing my original Magellan project I feel much more prepared to take on the challenges of the next year, including that of the GRE and applications for the PsyD programs. My professors and outside experiences have changed the way I attack problems and how I understand the hurting and confused. In conclusion, I have enjoyed this past year and its abundance of lessons, but I look forward to the next year and its new set of challenges and lessons.

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