My Life Has Me Thinking Essay

My personal and educational experiences have influenced my desire in pursuing my degree in Marriage & Family Therapy. My last semester of college, I was interning at Care Fresno. During this time, I lived in a high crime apartment located in southeast Fresno. I was able to reach out and mentor at risk families. This experience has equipped me with skills, such as: be able to empathize, communicate, and lead other effectively. After I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree, I started working as a Drug & Alcohol Counselor at Aegis Treatment Centers. While at Aegis Treatment Centers, I realized how much I enjoy providing empathy, psycho-educating, and teaching individuals how to cope with their emotions.

“If a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, then he hasn’t got a reason to live.” These were famous words of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoken June 23, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan.

I began my social work studies over twenty-five years ago at Utah State University in Logan, Utah. I never questioned my decision to pursue a career in social work; I loved my classes and worked hard to learn as much as possible. But the information I gained in undergraduate school simply opened the doors of my education. Most of my learning has come through constant questioning, personal research, and especially through work and life experience. Through these experiences I have encountered the challenges faced by individuals, families, and society and have been able to further access and develop the innate personality traits and abilities that originally led me to study social work as well as learn and practice the many skills necessary to be a successful mental health counselor.

My commitment to my goal of receiving a Master’s degree in counseling has been demonstrated throughout my studies at Rollins by maintaining a GPA of 4.0, my willingness to support my cohort, and by exhibiting an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Although I had retired on a fixed income from a business career due to a disability, I have confirmed my potential, stamina, and desire to counsel through my volunteer work as a guardian advocate, working with people who suffer from addiction, and by remaining an advocate for the LGBTQ community. I have thrived with my undergraduate internship at the Center for Drug Free Living and with my prepracticum at Centaur.

However, like many of my peers in the undergraduate community, I had a declared major but a persisting uncertainty and indecision about my future and career. Nevertheless, I continued to see myself in a personal setting with clients, where I could share psychological insight to those willing to open up and partake in personal growth. Through years of information, coursework, wise words from professors, and much personal insight, I decided to pursue a career in counseling

I was impressed with the program curriculum base trauma informed resiliency framework. For years Barry University has been responsible for educating social workers who now serve the community and make a difference. I look forward to the courses that will give me tools and teach me how to be a leader in my community. In exchange for this enrichment opportunity, as a graduate student I can be provided an innovative perspective on strategies to enhance my community resources, and workflow processes. All in all, I visualize my concept throughout my graduate coursework to be applicable when completing assessments, analyses, and strategic

My ultimate ambition is to work for a non-profit agency or private practice as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker; assisting in all forms of counseling needed to provide an individual with the best care mentally and physically. The concentration that I would like to pursue is “adults and their families” to broaden my educational field and be specialized in the adult population. Since I do not have a Bachelor’s degree in social work, I understand that this program will bring new information and experiences that I am not accustomed too. However, I could not be more enthusiastic about pursuing this next chapter of my life. This program is most suitable because it allows freedom to work, and places me in internships that are near to where I reside.

Resilience is a quality that I pride myself in encompassing, and it has in multiple ways, what has defined me as a student. Though both personally and academically, I suffered multiple setbacks, they have never succeeded in distracting me from my future ambitions. Over these numerous years as a student, gaining many insights, I have learned that spending weeks mourning failures is not an option and is ultimately ineffective. When I receive a less than adequate grade, or face problems in extracurriculars, in those moments of weakness, I may bend and stretch, however, it will never define me. I remind myself that through hard work it is possible to get back on course. As a result of my resilience, built through several hardships and failures,

For the past ten years I have dedicated myself working with three’s and four year’s old as a Family Worker. Working with children’s inspiring me to further my education. At first all I wanted was a SA in Social Work. However, working with diverse family’s needs, and the economy draining the city I work in sparkle me to continue my educational goal. Currently I’m enroll al GCU to obtain my BA in Social Work with emphasis in Sociology in which I’m aiming to successfully complete it to then move on to my MA in Social Worker to become a counselor.

My career goals following completion of graduate education in social work are to become a licensed clinical social worker and to open an individual private practice with a focus on serving children and families. My educational background in child and youth studies has taught me that children, families and couples encounter mental, emotional, behavioral and relationship challenges. I have also learned that these populations experience issues such as marital problems, family conflicts, depression/anxiety, bullying, isolation and other social issues (domestic abuse, substance abuse, academic/professional struggles). My ultimate goal with my private practice would be to address these challenges through individual therapy, group therapy and/or a combination of both to help clients sort through the causes of their problems.

The goals I plan to reach from college is getting my bachelors (BSW) and master (MSW) degree in social work. These challenging degrees lead me into my overall goal in life which is to become a child social worker with my own practice. A child social worker is a person who can assist children as well as their guardians that may have been abused or have serious mental illness. Being a child social worker can go from dealing with children that have been raped or abused to families that are not financially stable. The job overall can be a handful and stressful due to the bizarre situations such as removing children from an unsafe home, dealing with behavioral issues, and to maintain history case records with prepared reports. Unlike any other job being a social worker, you need skills to meet certain requirements enable to assist your client’s needs. There are many skills that tie into this profession, for instance, you would need the skill of: writing; coordination; complex problem solving; critical thinking; perceptiveness; and being able to listen and understand. This career goal has some risk, but those are risk I am willing to take on in the near future, but for now I am set on getting more knowledge and experience behind this

After high school I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I went to college thinking that I would pursue my degree in child psychology and live happily ever after. Soon after starting school I realized that while I thought it to be interesting, it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life. I foundered; I had no direction. I knew that whatever my career was going to be, it needed to be centered around children. Years later, I had the opportunity to work at the Wyoming Girls School and CASA. I fell in love with the idea of helping at-risk youth. So naturally I was drawn to social work. I’ve always felt that if one human being is capable of helping another, it should be done without a second thought. Having worked at

After my first year of college, I spoke with a Marriage and Family Therapist about my career goals. He informed me about the social work profession and explained that I could become a therapist with a MSW that could be completed in one year of graduate school. I decided to investigate social work and took an Introduction to Social Work course. I discovered that social work focuses on helping vulnerable populations and clients discover strengths they can use to improve their situations and find solutions to their problems. Social work differs from other mental health professions by being an inclusive field, incorporating various aspects that affect human behavior with influences of

When I graduated from high school, I was admitted at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I enrolled in the School of Business. My major was Accounting. I did so to please my parents and what I thought would be the best fit. I was not very happy, and I must confess that I was bored to death. After two years of studying something that I did not like, I changed my focus to School of Social Work. I was taking elective classes in Social Work/Mental Health Counseling and realize that this field held my interest and really represented how I viewed myself and the world. I was out from College for 5 years. Working with the Department of Social Services and numerous nonprofit organizations. For the last 5 years I have been working as a Social Worker for Department of Social Service Child Protective Service Investigator. I actual love my job because it is customer (client) oriented and I got to practice my counseling skills indirectly and directly with my clients I encounter on an daily

This explains the beginning of my life all the way to the end of my life. My life from the beginning was very fun as I grew up living with my mom’s friend and my friend. But there were a lot of fights and I was very hyper back then. I have ADHD so back then when I was little; I was very hyper and wouldn't stop moving around the place. I always was annoying back then and never seemed to get my homework done at school.