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"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." ~ Benjamin Franklin
By battiso1 | January 26, 2010
Whelp, I am officially 24 years young! My birthday was absolutely amazing…I couldn’t have asked for a better celebration or friends and family! Dinner at Dave and Buster’s was delicious — playtime there is always a good time — and the bar (Shenanigans) we went to after was well…shenanigans. One of my friends actually won enough tickets while we were at Dave and Buster’s to get a coffeemaker and six coffee mugs! The best part of the whole night was that my best friend in the whole world surprised me and showed up!!! I don’t think I have ever been surprised before in my life! She currently attends the French Pastry School in Chicago, IL and flew out for the party!
Now that break and my birthday are over with, it is time to buckle down and get serious about my studies. It’s interesting being in the second semester now I no longer feel new to the school. I now know where everything is located (you would hope so since I provide tours to the prospective graduate students). I know the best places to eat depending on my mood, know where I like to study, and just have the general groove of being a Canisius graduate student! It was refreshing seeing what people will be in your classes on the first day, now that you have a general idea who most everyone is and what they might bring to the discussions. When making my course schedule for this semester I made sure I had all new professors. I enjoyed and learned a lot from all of my professors last year, but think it’s interesting to get different knowledge from everyone and important to me to get to know all of the faculty for kind of selfish reasons — you never know when who you know might help you! Most of the professors work within the counseling field, in addition to their teaching, which makes it interesting to hear their life lessons and prospective.
My professor for my Psychopathology and the DSM-IV TR course, Ms. D’Angelo, is a Canisius graduate from the counseling program and also works for Crisis Services. This is nice because she works directly with the information she is teaching so she can give us hands-on examples and teach from experience and knowledge.
My professor, Dr. Rutter, teaching my Research Techniques course, conducted his own research while he was obtaining his doctorate degree, so he knows a lot of different research techniques. Along with that, our big project in that class will be writing our own 25-30 page research proposal. He has graciously said that we can submit as many drafts of the assignment as we need and that he will only grade the final paper, but to expect our drafts to have lots and lots of red marks to help us improve our work toward the final proposal. He has also created an online research journal that we have to submit something to each week where we discuss our progress on our research with our peers; that way we can learn from one another.
Pre-practicum is taught by Ms. Niland. She is a graduate of the Canisius College counseling program as well and serves as the director of the counseling center on campus. She uses the skills daily that she will be teaching to us, so again she will be able to provide us with real-life experience. I think that my biggest anticipation for the semester is in this course, even more than the 25-30 page paper I mentioned earlier. We will have to conduct a mock counseling session in front of the class, behind a two-way mirror with a classmate. I am extremely nervous for this day, but it will be very helpful to get the feedback and begin using the skills we will be learning within this course.
The last course I am taking this semester is Chemical Dependency and Rehab, taught by Mr. George. He is a rehab counselor at Buffalo State College and also works in various other settings. His specialty is in drugs and alcohol counseling, so learning from him will be ideal.
There was only one disappointing thing about this semester… book prices. This semester they are at an all-time high for my college career (and I have been in college six years now…yikes). It made my stomach turn over a few times, the first time I tallied the prices up. I counted them over and over to be sure that I wasn’t making numbers up or counting something more than once. But, sure enough, I was right the first time. Right now I am just working on getting my books so I can begin my readings and studies for school. I just tell myself that I will be using these books the rest of my life as a reference and they are the tools I need to be successful. So, no matter what, you have to get the books!
All-in-all, there are a lot of new and exciting things going on with school beginning and will stay this way until I take my last final exam at the end of the semester, and I look forward to it all! At this point in the semester I am just working on beginning on the right foot.
My best friend Cameron (co-birthday), my best friend Barb (the girl who flew in from Chicago), and me. We call ourselves the Three Musketeers. :)
Topics: Counseling and Human Services | Comments Off
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