My goal in life was to follow a career that enabled me to help others in any way I could. For the longest time I was drawn to sensationalized careers, like criminal law and psychiatry, but as I grew I realized that counselling was the career that really paired well with me. I have a long history of mental health problems among my family, friends, and myself. Unfortunately, my family was never the type to seek help and my friends were seen as just going through childhood phases. This allowed me to be there at all time for my friends specifically. We had long talks, I listened and in the end we always found a solution. Things are definitely easier when you are a child talking to your best friend. There are no judgements, I was just wanting them …show more content…
This curiosity led me to pursue an education focusing on Psychology. At first I was very keen on learning and examining psychopaths, one of my many intellectual obsessions, however, when I moved to Ottawa and I gained more knowledge and experience that led me down a more interpersonal approach. My education at Carleton University was the starting point of my journey towards attaining my goal. During my time at Carleton I was fortunate enough to have an excellent experience, fantastic professors, and knowledge within psychology that is very useful and priceless. I took several introductory courses (I completed the overarching general classes at the University of Regina) to specific topics like: Forensics, Cognitive, Biological, Developmental, and Personality. In my upper years at Carleton the classes available were very detailed and specific, which allowed me to tailor my education to the career goals I hope to achieve. I took several statistics courses, a class on motivation and emotion, criminal behaviour, and psychology of women. I was able to supplement this knowledge with my electives that mostly focused on gender, race, religion, violence against women, and criminalized …show more content…
Through this experience I realized that we as counsellors can only do so much and that our clients are in control and need that control in these delicate circumstances. The women in this organization are very supportive and this work has enhanced my active listening abilities, my view on the world around me, and has pushed me to become involved without the need to give advice. This past training session I was chosen as a training ‘buddy’. I was given the job to evaluate one of our newcomers and support her through two shifts. I was very honoured to be chosen for this and it definitely enhanced my confidence in my skills. To this day I am still an active crisis counsellor and I hope to bring those skills to this program. I hope to not only enhance the skills I already have, but to gather more knowledge on counselling skills and techniques I am sure I have not come across yet. I hope to learn skills for interpersonal and face-to-face counselling and meet supportive and intelligent people in the process. Overall, I hope to walk away from this program a well-rounded individual that can do her best every time and hopefully alter someone’s life in a positive