Green Beer, Fish’n Chips, and Basketball

By Jonathon Sumpter – March is the quietest busy month on the calendar. No comparison to Christmas, Easter, the Super Bowl, and the like, March still commands respect from any calendar viewer. March Madness (GO Marquette!!), St. Patty’s Day (go green beer!!), and Lent (go fish’n chips!!) are the big three that come to my mind. No matter what your celebration of choice, there is a spirit of change in the air. March Madness breathes a breath of momentary change: win or go home. St. Patty’s Day often begs a change of sensibility around about 2 a.m. And no matter which Lent you’re talking about, the whole point is change. For the not so obvious point: when you reach into your pocket and pull out a wad of lent, it’s about time to do laundry.

However, March for the Masters in Community Counseling student is the preface of life choices. March is a reminder that in one month, we will face class finals, projects, wrapping up internship placements, studying for the national tests for future licensure and passing the program. After this, in the same month planing for careers, moving, networking, 401k planning, and setting up steps for the future.

March has a hint of excitement, a sense of urgency, and a shroud of possibility. How the time has flown from my graduate program experience. I moved to Wisconsin three years ago to be with my wife, get my Masters degree, and pursue my future. Looking back at all I have done, I can only imagine what comes next. For now, though, I have a lot of planning and preparing to do. For the moment, I’ll stick with the green beer, fish’n chips, and MU basketball, the rest will come, and change, in due time.

Reflecting on Redirecting

By Sabrina Bong – During my undergraduate years, I worked at a retail job to help pay for expenses. I would often spend my summers ringing up people’s purchases, talking to them about the humid weather and whatever major news event happened to be going on. And in early August, talk always turned from the weather and news to the back-to-school season. Parents would stock up on looseleaf, pencils, and washable markers, much to the chagrin of their children. By the time the families would arrive at my checkout line, the parents would look absolutely exhausted, the children angry, and both appeared to have reached the end of their wits.

Surprisingly, however, this experience in retail  did not dampen my spirits on the back-to-school chaos. (In fact, it’s still my favorite season.) Nor did it spoil my love of Christmas.

In fact, I believe retail made me appreciate the holiday season all the more. I would come home from work and sit next to the Christmas tree, reveling in the tranquility of being at home. I would think about how blessed I was to be at home, with my family, away from the chaos and arguing that usually happened at the store.

The same could be said about graduate school. There is chaos. There are surprises. On occasion, there were times when I looked at all the papers and presentations I had to do and just wanted to run away from them. During finals, I struggled to prioritize my studying. Some of these experiences could’ve poisoned my idea of graduate school. But it is during times of tranquility and quiet that I appreciate everything more. Now that I am out of the whirlwind that is finals, I can look back on everything and smile at all that happened.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to be attending Marquette as a graduate student. I am thankful to be pursuing a degree in something I truly love. I am blessed to be learning with some of the most outstanding soon-to-be counselors. And I feel lucky that I have teachers who love what they do and teach with passion and enthusiasm.

I wish that every student had this opportunity: to pursue a higher degree and learn from people who are passionate about their topic. I realize that in today’s world, this possibility is becoming more of a dream and less of a reality. With tuition prices rising, and people struggling to find jobs, more and more students are unable to pursue their dreams and attend college.

This is why I decided to become a counselor. I want to be able to give students all the opportunities that I had in elementary and high school. I had school counselors who pushed me to apply for scholarships, challenged me to take AP classes, and educated me on financial aid, the college application process, and the major transition between high school and college. I want to do the same for others someday. I hope to pay it forward.

Take the time today to remember what is important in life. Hope everyone has a happy holiday!

The Art of Caring for Yourself

By Sabrina Bong – Every month, we counseling students attend a colloquium. All of us – Master’s and Doctorate students, as well as many of the faculty – sit in a room together and listen to a presentation that exposes us to various research work in counseling or how we can integrate ourselves into our counseling profession. These colloquia are great because we get to learn about the work involved in counseling and also learn tips for when we become counselors.

Our last colloquium session was from Melinda Hughes, who talked about The Healing Center and trauma issues.

One interesting thing I remember was that she talked about the difference between forgiveness and letting go. Her example was something like this: sometimes, when a person is hurt, they can forgive the person who hurt them. They can find empathy somewhere for the person who wronged them. And then there is letting go, realizing that something has happened to you and not obsessing about it.

I had never known there was such a difference, and it made me think about my own life. Were there things that I needed to forgive? Or if I couldn’t forgive, should I let them go?

As counseling students, we often talk about self-care.

Graduate school is a stressful experience, and it is easy to give yourself over to books, exams, and flashcards. However, we are often told that unless we take care of ourselves first –mentally and physically – we won’t be able to help others. How will we be able to help others when we are exhausted and stressed? If we have unresolved issues that are hanging over our heads, can we really help the people we work with resolve their own problems?

So I decided to do a little self-care this week. Following a midterm I had been stressing over, I used that night to sit in my room, turn on my music, eat a little chocolate (my biggest weakness) and ignore my homework. To be fair, I woke up early the next morning to finish my assignments and readings, but I figured that one night wouldn’t hurt it. And it felt amazing to just sit in my room and reflect and not have to worry about Piaget or Freud.

And while I sat there, I thought about forgiveness and letting go.

We have all had problems with our pasts. There are things we wish we could’ve done, things we would like to forget, things that we would like to replay over and over in our heads until we have analyzed every second. But those moments are done. What is left for us are the lessons we learned and the hope that we won’t repeat our mistakes.

So that night, I forgave. I let go.
And I slept for more than six hours – which is quite an accomplishment during midterm week!

I enter this next week able to breathe a little easier and a little less stressed. Now that I have learned to self-care both physically and mentally, I believe I’m more equipped to help others.

I’m ready. Let the counseling begin.

Getting it All Done: The Timing is Everything

By Sabrina Bong – During my freshman orientation, the dean of students gave a speech about the importance of time management. At the time, I believed that I could handle the rigors of college life. But as I got more and more involved in activities, and received more homework than I ever believed possible, I had to adjust my study habits. Though I still procrastinated (a lot), I learned how to use my free hours to study and get homework done.

And then I started grad school. And may I just say that while high school to college is a huge time management change, college to grad school is even greater?

This was definitely apparent this week, when I was bombarded with papers and readings.

It’s easy in grad school to get caught up in all the free time you have. Even if you have a job and work in the mornings, it is refreshing to have only one class a night. Instead of the usual class every other day, you get a whole week to do your reading for that class. A whole week. When I first heard that, it sounded amazing, as if someone had told me I had the entire year to read one chapter. But somehow, procrastination always manages to sneak in. It’s as if the length of time between each class promotes more Facebook posting, Twitter tweeting, and Youtube watching. (I still think that I could’ve majored in Facebook.) The other thing is that the tests and papers and projects are all more in-depth and a little more intense than undergrad. During my undergrad, I would think nothing of starting a paper the night before it was due. This time around, I can honestly say I started everything at least the weekend before.

I have received many tips about time management through the years, so I thought I would offer some of this advice to readers:

1. Work ahead if possible. It always seems like there is a lot of time between assignments, especially between major papers and projects. But then there will be that one week where everything hits at once. If you work ahead in a few classes, you’ll be able to prevent a chaos-filled week.
2. Get a calendar and write all your due dates down. This was the first piece of time management advice that I ever received in college, and it’s something I still do to this day. Having a calendar with all of the due dates for every paper, project, and test keeps me aware of what I have coming up. I also color-code the dates so that I can know what class the assignment is for quickly.
3. Break assignments down into smaller chunks. For big projects and studying, I usually take out my planner and plan mini-due dates. I will split a project up into five parts, and then try to complete each part by that date. That way, I am not as stressed when the actual due date comes around!

Making the Grade: Transitioning to Graduate School

By Sabrina Bong – We all go through a number of transitions in our lives. From kindergarten, with coloring books and dress-up time, to first grade, where we got actual homework. From junior high to high school, high school to college, and (for me) college to grad school. But this transition was a little more daunting. Not because I was scared of the school, or scared of the program. Nope, I was scared of the grading system.

A few weeks before applying to grad school, my friend and I overheard a conversation between two other students. One of them said he was going to apply to graduate school. His friend then said, “I heard if you get below a B in grad school, you fail the class.” Suffice to say, my friend and I exited the elevator, both of us a deathly shade of green.

So during my first few weeks of class, I sent myself into a slight panic.

I was skimming my syllabi and looking at all the reading I had to do, and I was panicking. How in the world could I do all this reading, write these papers, learn how to be a good counselor, and pass everything with a B or higher? Not that I was a bad undergraduate student, but I had been reassured that no matter what grade I got, there was always something lower. I had a cushion. Now, if I got a B, I would need to be tearing my hair out.

However, I quickly found out that all my panic was unnecessary. The Graduate Student Organization (GSO) provided me with the opportunity to have a School Counseling mentee, whom I met with during my first week of class. She immediately calmed me down, telling me that it was okay. Walking into graduate school and getting those first few assignments was going to be scary and overwhelming and challenging, she said. But as long as I tried hard and did my best to absorb the material, I would be fine. She also told me that there was going to be a lot of facts and terms thrown at me, but that if I didn’t understand everything the first time around, don’t panic. Many of the concepts would be repeated in other classes, and there was a good chance I would understand things better after I heard them two or three more times from different professors.

The older grad students have been a really great resource and comfort to all of us first years. They have been providing us with excellent study tips, thoughtful time management advice, and remind us that we need to take care of ourselves as well. They also are really taking the time to get to know us and answer any questions we may have. Hearing their experiences and listening to their advice has made this transition much easier and not quite as overwhelming. Now, I’m not as worried about this first year.

And as for grades … well, we’ll just have to see.

A Graduate Education for a Classroom Teacher

By Nick McDaniels — As I am progressing through my fourth semester of graduate work, my third as a Master’s degree candidate at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, I am constantly forced to reflect on the time commitment that graduate school represents.

The time I spend in class, writing papers, traveling to and from school, and reading text books is time that I could spend either with my family, polishing my lessons, or grading papers.

It would seem easiest to choose either graduate school, or full time employment as a teacher, and in fact, in terms of your sleep and work load, it would make the most sense. However, since, as I have contested before, experience is the most crucial part of a teacher’s success in the classroom, learning after having experience as a stand-alone teacher gives you the ability to put everything you discover directly into practice. Short of teaching, then taking a leave from teaching to return to graduate school, an option most of us do not have, the best route is to continue your education while you are teaching.

For me, a teacher, parent, and graduate student with a bad habit of adding commitments, I am finding that anything I am learning that I cannot directly apply, or see the possible application of, is something I do not remember. Most adult learners are this way. My teacher prep program at MU was effective because I was learning while I was in the classroom at least to some extent as part of field placement experiences.

Even more so as a working graduate student, when your time is more valuable and your tolerance for busy work is low, a program that understands that the practical theory will be what is remembered and applied and what is not practical is nothing but filler in the coursework, is a more useful program.

Attending grad school while teaching during the day, provided that you are enrolled in a program that values practical application (try most schools that prepare teachers for teaching in high poverty areas), will hopefully equip you with applicable skills and theories that will improve your teaching, your understanding of your job and school, and a deeper understanding of the students you teach. It has for me, and I can’t imagine taking a different path into and through my young career in education.

Endurance: Tackling the Graduate School Marathon

By Trudi Arnold — Halfway through the second to last semester of this graduate program, I’ve had a revelation: Graduate school is a test of endurance more challenging than inline marathons.

Skating 26.2 miles of country highway is feeling easier than cramming a bunch of knowledge into my head, reworking it so it becomes applicable and relevant to the real-world experience I’m trying to get, meeting deadlines, and tossing a sprinkle of self-doubt on the road to throw the whole race off balance.

About halfway through a marathon, I always find myself in a bit of a zone on semi-autopilot…daydreaming about the end.

My grad school daydream goes something like this: Someday my brain won’t have to be hyper-engaged for 11 hours a day. Someday the things I read to improve my skills won’t be required to pass a class. Someday I will be able to sit with a client without feeling the need to micro-evaluate what I’m doing based on what I have learned in class. Someday I will have more control over my schedule and will do more self-care. Someday I will be able to sink low and coast down a hill and maintain a good clip for awhile solely because I have good bearings. Someday I will won’t have to write a last minute paper in 4 hours that I should have started right away.

This semester feels like the monster hill three quarters into the marathon.

I’m tired, my form is becoming a bit lazy and I can’t see the other side of that hill. I could coast down the other side and the finish line could be in visual range, or it could be a cliff.  The motivation to finish needs to come from my spirit because my body is exhausted.

I encourage myself to get back to the fundamentals: form, stroke, breathe, push.
Establish the rhythm that I know makes me feel like I’m going faster and just flow with it.

My approach to my education needs the fundamentals: theory, knowledge, practice, time management.
Get back to the rhythm…breathe…flow with it…