Counseling Psychology: Career Analysis

During and immediately after my undergraduate course, I had the opportunity to work as a volunteer at the American Counseling Association and as a houseparent for an institution that houses mentally ill individuals. The association welcomes students and encourages them to offer voluntary services while they have an opportunity. My experience at the association, as a houseparent, and currently as a paraprofessional for mentally ill adults and children with behavioral problems provided me with a solid footing as well as the necessary resources to prepare for my career in counseling. The experiences gave me an opportunity to attend several conferences and workshops where I had the chance to meet and interact with other professional counselors. These opportunities opened me up and exposed me to numerous challenging situations that helped me to grow both personally and professionally. Interacting with more qualified and experienced people in the association, institution for the mentally ill, and agency that I currently work for has helped me to develop confidence in my work as I sought their assistance and guidance whenever I needed help. The experiences gained while working at the association was helpful to me as I could apply that knowledge and the skills learnt to help my church members. At my church, I was a youth leader and

I have wanted to be a counselor since my freshmen year of high school and in the counseling field there are many specialties that I can focus on. I am fairly certain that I want to specialize in helping people with substance abuse and their families. I have always focused my studies, interests, and work on things that will help me in this field and I have a lot of qualities that help to enhance me in my eventual career. There are difficulties when I get to practice also like what people perceive as correct counseling style, challenges with my gender and race, and finally creating my own counseling style and plans.

As the standards of the counseling profession are continuously being shaped, I desire to play a role in the educating

The choices we make early in life have an enormous impact on our future. I have always known that I wanted to directly impact people’s lives and my personal experiences have set me on the school-counseling path. In the future, I would love to influence another generation of students to soar for their dreams.

My pursuit of becoming a School Counselor led me to apply to the School Counseling Master’s Program at University of Maryland, College Park. I am a former student at University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. After graduating and teaching for two years in Prince George’s County Public Schools, I discovered my true passion lies not only in the classroom and students’ academics, but playing a pivotal role in the growth of their career, social, and personal development. Although I am no longer teaching full-time at the moment, my interaction with students from diverse backgrounds left an indelible responsibility to continue making a difference in our students. The objectives and mission of the School Counseling Master’s Program at University of Maryland can best help my goal of becoming an effective counselor and leader who is an agent of change to students and service the mental and emotional well-being of the younger generation.

The experiences that I shared with those students presented me with great satisfaction. This influenced my decision to apply for a graduate degree in school counseling. Although, at this point in time I do not hold any experiences in school counseling I have researched ways to gain that experience. Volunteering at both public schools to shadow licensed school counselors and independent counseling centers will provide me the necessary experiences to gain hands on knowledge for the field. The ability to relate interpersonally to individuals from different cultural backgrounds is extremely important for a counselor. Being knowledgeable of a client’s culture, identity, ethnicity, race and gender play a major part in the counseling process. Possessing cultural competent is key to engaging a diverse clientele. Culture norms and rules change the way an individual interact. I understand the importance of identifying the barriers and bias in interacting with individual from different cultures. Through my previous years of education and current work experiences I obtained valuable interpersonal skills. These skills assist with communicating effectively with a diverse group of individuals. Those skills involved effective listening, problem-solving, decision-making, assertiveness, and verbal and non-verbal communication. In detail, while working as teacher, I was afforded the opportunity of advising interns on making practical

As I started my college career at Tuskegee University, where I double majored in psychology and English. I was passionate about creating social awareness and helping people, but I was unsure what career I was interested in after graduation. I thought about attending graduate school for Counseling Psychology, but I just was not sure about it. I spoke to a professor in the Counselor Education program at Georgia State University and discussed my interests with her. She suggested I look for a program accredited by Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) School Counseling. I enrolled in the School Counseling program at Clark Atlanta

Through my challenges and work I realized that I want to pursue my education in Educational Counseling. Educational counseling has always fascinated me, but I never realized I could pursue it as a career path. I had a fear of applying because of my low Grade Point Average (GPA), but I remember conquering the same fear as an

Along my path, my coursework helped solidify that choice as the right choice for me. In undergraduate classes, I never took any career counseling classes, so up until this class, I had been developing my general counseling philosophy, but not my career counseling philosophy. So far, I have really enjoyed taking a look at how to apply some theories I was already familiar with, like myers-briggs, and new theories like trait and factor theory to career counseling.

I also choose the counseling profession to felicitate change with social legislation and laws that negatively impact the poor, and venerable, people. I am hoping to be a prominent voice in the decision room.

Writing Sample I – Is my written statement for admissions into the Master of Arts in School Counseling program at Marshall University Graduate School.

I am submitting to Syracuse University’s School of Education for full-time enrollment in the Ph.D. program for Counselor Education and Supervision. I pursue this degree in the spirit of Syracuse University’s philosophy of “living excellence,” a concept I fully embrace. My version of this philosophy is to live

Clifford Frontera is a sophomore pursuing a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology with a possible minor in Organizational Behavior at Brooklyn College. He is currently still exploring the industry of Psychology that he would like to go into, but is interested in Human Resources. Clifford has also considered in going into the Marketing field. He has been awarded Dean’s List from Fall 2015- Fall 2016. Currently, he works as a College Assistant at the Magner Career Center at Brooklyn College where he helps students connect with their dream careers. He finds that the most rewarding thing of working there is seeing students that were unsure of what they want to do leaving the office with

Compassion and interpersonal are essential skills for counselors to possess in “normalizing [client’s] fears of [their] undetermined future” (Cornell, 2015 pg??). This is the initial step toward assisting clients’ who feel unprepared in pursuing an occupation. Counselors should use these skills during the relationship development phase and when occupational changeover is certain or has precedent in meeting their clients’ general life expectations.

Pursuing a degree in counseling, is a task that is both exciting and scary at the same time. There are a number of processes in which graduate students go through not only academically, but also in their personal life. This journal entry provides a short perspective of how life for students going into graduate school transforms. Here, one can find a few of the thoughts and feelings a new counselor in training (CIT) may experience during enrollment, beginning the first class, and a few of the adjustments made to fit graduate studies in life.