Back into the grind

A student of mine from last summer emailed me, asking for any pointers on facilitating a discussion group. I was flattered that he remembered me, much less having asked me for advice. The short exchange took me back to a year ago, when I was prepping to apply for grad school. I was so needlessly stressed. Scrambling at the last minute for letters of recommendation, rearranging the commas and prepositions on my personal statements, forking over hundreds of dollars in application fees, and taking the much-dreaded GRE. All for this coming fall. Let’s hope that it was all worth it. My biggest fear is that social welfare is not what I really wanted to pursue, after all. And then I’d have to do it all over again. I guess I’ll find out in a couple of months. The past year of idleness made me realize more than ever that I NEED to pursue this. I can do more than work a dead-end job that will land me no satisfaction but more and more resentment by the end of each day.

The thought of research and study excites me.

Speaking of which, I have enrolled in my fall quarter classes: Human Development, Community Theory, Social Welfare Policy, Theory of Social Welfare with Individuals, Groups, Families. In addition to being in school twice a day from 8-5, I have an internship every other day from 8-5. Busy. I don’t find out where I get placed until mid-September.

Now I’m stressing over having to move, getting acclimated to a new environment, and being away from Theo for more than days at a time. I got over my hurdles last year, and suffice it to say, I’ll get over these in time.

Life is still good

Yesterday felt like today, and today feels like Wednesday. Today is considerably better, though. I drove back from Long Beach in a pretty good mood. Dr. H somehow manages to reaffirm my abilities and my excitement for future prospects whenever I speak with her. Two hours went by like it was half an hour. I have to say that I feel pretty lucky to have the mentors that I do. I feel awesome for having done what I have in the past several months. Or what I’ve done in the past year, even.

Naturally, Dr. H wants me to look into counseling psych. They’re all pushing me into the “dark side,” whether it be clinical psych, counseling psych, sociology, whatever. I have decided what I want in grad school, though: the ability to do research and improve those skills, work with policy programming and/or evaluation catering to disadvantaged groups*, clinical training (still a bit iffy on this point, though.. is it what i definitely want to do, and if so how much service will I provide and to which populations?), and most importantly, apply theory into practice. I’ve expressed before that I like to dabble in various arenas. Suffice it to say, a social welfare program is beginning to look very attractive to me. I may have bought the GRE psychology subject test book for nothing… However! more research needs to be done in the meantime.

I’m a huge nerd when it comes to planning the future; I probably get more excited than I should.. I have my whole next year planned out! (tentatively)

I just had a nice talk with Albert. I’m going to miss living here. And in completely unrelated news, Bear is the most helpful when it comes to getting rid of spiders.

*I’ve discovered that psychology may not be a very good fit for me because it is more person-oriented. I’d like to explore how society influences pathology, etc. etc.