Sometimes I believe in as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast

I need to muddle through some thoughts on my career. Which may seem boring to you, but this is my blog so too bad.

Once upon a time, I was in high school and music was my life. Choirs, musicals, concert band, marching band, drum majoring, district band, weekly flute lessons, guitar class, attempts to improve my piano playing (HA). You name it, I did it all. And loved it. But the entire time all I could think was...what kind of job will this get me in the future? You teach, or you perform. I didn't wanna do either. Teaching was always the last thing on earth I ever wanted to do with my life. So I applied to college as undecided. (And music will always remain a passion of mine.) But before my senior year of high school was over, I picked psychology to major in, kind of on a whim. This was the whim.

Hearing stories about families torn apart always seriously bothered me. And I wanted to fix it. Have you ever noticed that you can name any, ANY problem a person has in their life, and 90% of the time it stems back to an issue in their family? Addiction, depression, relationship problems...you name it. Whenever I meet someone new, one of the first things I want to know is what that person's family situation is like, because guarenteed it will explain a lot about why that person is the way he/she is. The family is central to everything...to life, society, the future, everything. And what happens within a family has a huge effect on all people involved. So my whim was that I wanted to help families and marriages. Because true love never fails, never ends, and the family is the central unit of love.

I went to college for psychology. My whim turned out to be what I now consider a gentle push by God in the right direction, because I fell in love with what I was studying. Like I tell anyone that will listen to me long enough, studying psychology isn't learning how to pick out the weirdos and diagnose people. It's about learning how to understand everyone. To explain behaviors and why everyone acts the way they do.

Anywho, my plan was to be a marriage/family therapist, which entails going to school for the rest of my life for a Ph.D. I guess I was cool with that, although all that school was kind of a depressing thought. But then I took my Counseling Strategies class. I had a prof who let's just say I didn't get along with, and also learned that being a therapist involves all kinds of professional and ethical issues that majorly turned me off. For example, when you're working with a family, you can't be their friend at the same time. You can't show emotion when you counsel someone. You're supposed to give empathetic responses but not actually feel them. Is that not an oxymoron? You can't divulge any personal info. People are going to get attached to you and stalk you and call you at all hours of the nite. yada yada. This is what I took away from that class. That same semester, I was taking a spanish class and the prof required service learning, so me and a group of my friends volunteered to teach in the ESL classroom at Rohrerstown Elementary. And lo and behold, I discovered that teaching little kiddos is SUPER fun...the last thing on earth I had ever wanted to do.

After that semester, I decided my calling in life was to be an elementary school counselor. An added bonus was that you only need a master's degree to do that, which would mean only 2-3 more years of school. Last fall in my final semester, I did my internship at NL's 4 elementary schools with the two guidance counselors, annnnnnnd HATED it. Every school district is different. But all they did was teach, teach, teach. Go to 8 different classrooms a day, teach classes, and not have any time to talk one-on-one with kiddos that really need it. And I still do not want to teach, I want to counsel. But school counseling, not for me.

My next thought was and continues to be school psychology...but I'm still not sure. It's my future, you know? It's a difficult decision. School psychology also requires a master's degree. It involves working one-on-one with the really bad kids and gifted kids. Lots of testing. Lots of observing. And on the downside lots of paperwork. AND as a school psychologist you don't build much rapport with the students like a guidance counselor does, because unless they're really messed up, they don't even see you or know you exist, which is kinda poop. But I also like that working in a school, I can be in the same district as my own kids (whenever that decides to happen), be with them in the evenings, and have summers off. So those are my current thoughts...to go back to school ASAP for a master's in school psych.

I just feel like my original dream of helping families is gone. Working with kids helps, I suppose...they're a big part of family. But it's not exactly what I had in mind. And I also feel like a major reason why I changed my mind was that I'm getting lazy and don't feel like spending 10 more years of my life to get a PhD and finally be able to do it all. But I guess time changes perspective a little and it all happens for a reason. It's not just me being tired of school, but those 2 classes that helped set me down a different path. And no matter what, I'll be doing something I enjoy and for the greater good of little kiddos and their families, right?

One thing is for sure, I wanna go back to school soon. Like Fall of 2011 maybe? Where? Who knows. =)