WEEK 12

When I was in grade school I always wanted to become a veterinarian, I loved all creatures great and small and had a knack for animal husbandry. This came in very helpful as we lived on a farm with lots of livestock that fed us and put food on the table. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on perspective I was a horrible student; while my big brother made A’s and B’s without so much as looking at a book while I studied and still got C’s, D’s, and F’s. There were no ADHD or ADD’s mentioned in the era that I grew up and went to elementary school. I was punished every nine weeks when grades came out and continued the trend all the way through high school. It was not until later in life that I had developed the coping mechanisms and skill sets needed to actually learn. Basic combat training in the Army while being 34 years old taught me about hands on, visual, written, and lectured information and how my brain could retain information given to me in many different ways. I learned that I was actually very smart. After that, I started my first semester as a college freshman at 36. My major was natural science with an emphasis in biology and a minor in theater. While obtaining my degree I began working in adult and higher education at the university that I was attending. After obtaining my degree I began to advise students and found that I had a passion for helping students who were developmental and had to start out in classes that were remedial, I understood their lack of pride and was always mindful that I too had to take those classes and how it made me feel that I was inferior in some way. Watching the fresh out of high school students pressing buttons on their Texas instruments TA four trillion what ever it was, and then hearing them exclaim "Look, it makes a graph!! I was wondering how to turn the stupid thing on!  I was an adult and felt that I would never get it. Algebra was not a requirement in high school when I went, I had barely learned my times tables, now they wanted me to solve for Y?  It gave me a passion for helping these students by encouraging them, having empathy for them and a bit of understanding the things that they are telling themselves.  I grew up thinking that I was mentally handicapped and at any moment that the school counselor would walk into a classroom and ask me to go to the special education classroom.
  I think that these experiences set in motion an ability to see the need for more than just academic advising, I believe that it is what made me decide to get my master's degree in counseling.  Anyone can look at a degree audit and tell a student what they need to take next, most beginning freshmen need far more than that, especially if they require developmental classes.  If anyone would have told me when I was 20 that I would be taking my last class in a master’s degree in anything at this stage in my life I would have thought them insane.  I still love my critters and have a knack for caring for them but gain far more satisfaction by knowing that I was able to encourage and inspire from a level of understanding that many counselors my not have. It doesn’t make me any better at it, it just gives me a different perspective.  I will never forget the first time I was told that I was stupid, I also will never forget the first time I was told that I was smart, nor will I forget the college professor who said it.  I want to see the light come on, I want to empower students on all levels of ability, but have a passion for those who were left behind in their K-12 years. I would have thought that things would be different by now, and in many schools they are far better, but I still have college students who cannot do simple math, or punctuation in a paragraph (not that I am stellar at either myself) but I do not write “I wood like to go back to the test sinter to try agin” as one student did last week.  They are still slipping through the cracks in our region and not all will succeed at obtaining a college degree, but those who really want a degree will have every opportunity and all of the help that our program offers.