Another semester goes by and I ought to be feeling great. I’ve gotten straight A grades and a national honors award that could earn me admission and scholarship to any 4-year program I choose. Teachers and classmates are heaping on the praise, certain that I will make a great therapist. My bosses say I practically am one already, because the clients I’ve been assigned are really enjoying their time with me.… [Read more]
Halfway done with a 2-year Mental Health certificate program, with another 4 years of undergrad and 3 years of grad school to look forward to after that (if I want to get a “real” career and not have to beg for a couch to crash on ever again), and I’m already burning out. The dull and dry reading and writing assignments, the suspect perspectives being voiced in class discussions, the skewed theories that raise more questions than they answer; this wasn’t what I had signed up for.… [Read more]
In case you missed the first installment: At 24 years of age, after an impressively protracted derelict adolescence culminated in broke, broken, homeless desperation bad enough to make me feel sorry about how I was living, I figured it was time to “get it together.” So off I went to my community college to begin a career in “mental health” work, to get my head out of my punk ass and serve people with much bigger problems than mine.… [Read more]
