Academic Autobiography for the Past

Academic Autobiography For the past ten years I have worked in a psychiatric division of a local hospital where I have worked with dual diagnosis patients. Every day I find myself using something I learned from my college education when working with these patients. Whether it is a theory from a Psychology and Play course or a method of organizing and conducting group counseling sessions, it is clear that without my higher education I would not be able to succeed on a daily basis in my current employment environment.

My undergraduate education, in which I pursued and successfully earned my bachelor degree, gave me the diverse and all-encompassing education I needed to succeed as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation counselor. As I look back on my journey to my bachelor degree, I see that the courses I took, the books I read, the papers I wrote, presentations I gave and discussions I engaged in developed me as an individual. Not only did this journey develop me as an individual, it developed me as a college educated individual.

My undergraduate education, whether I was aware of it at the time or not, instilled into me the knowledge, insights skills and convictions that make me who I am today. To me, being a college educated person means more than having earned a piece of paper that proclaims your success at obtaining a degree. No, to me being a college educated person means much, much more.

To me, being a college educated person means that you are a well-rounded person who has the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in any situation. This fact is evidenced by the courses I took along my educational journey, or from my Academic Autobiography. As with any pursuit, my academic journey began with acquiring the basic skills that I would need in order to later succeed in the courses for my counseling concentration. Thus, my journey begins with English Composition 101.

Here I was able to develop the strategies of college level writing and critical thinking by studying and learning various rhetorical methods that would be applicable both in my later studies and in my counseling career. Being a student whose primary language is not English, this course was both challenging and rewarding. Although I struggled with learning the finer concepts of English rhetoric, I knew that it was essential for my academic and personal success.

Thus, I also learned the skill of discipline and hard work as I spent hours working on mastering these important skills. In the end, I succeeded and was able to walk away with such essential skills as composition writing, academic research, persuasive essays and proper citation forms. Without these skills, I would not have been able to succeed in my concentration courses that used these skills as a foundation for more specialized study.

Likewise, Speech and Communication 101 also provided me with the basic academic skills of giving speeches and presentations based on my research. The main advantage that I took away from this course, and one that has helped me immensely in both my later academic studies and my counseling work, is that it gave me the practice, and therefore the confidence, to give speeches in front of public audiences. Prior to this course my limited English prevented me from having confidence to speak in front of groups.

However, with a combination of the skills I gained in both this class and my English Composition course, I was able to give well-researched and in-depth presentations and lead dynamic group discussions. This has been extremely beneficial in my career as I am regularly required to give public presentations as a drug and alcohol counselor. With this strong foundation of the basics for academic success, I was able to move into my concentration courses.

In my DARC 158 Biology of Addictions course, I was introduced to the medical side behind addictive personalities and the reasonings for addictions. Here we studied both the short- and long-term consequences of substance use and abuse as to all systems of the body. From these studies I was able to better understand the biology of addiction in dual diagnosis patients and how their psychology affects and directly impacts their addiction.

This knowledge has been invaluable in my work with dual diagnosis patients, giving me the knowledge to better understand how each patient's addiction can be insidious. My DARC 251-252 Counseling Internship solidified my decision to be a substance abuse and psychiatric counselor. Here I was given the unique opportunity to put what I have learned in the classroom to use in an actual field setting. In my internship I spent fifteen hours a week working directly with substance abuse patients in an actual substance abuse treatment facility.

No only was I able to observe the treatment procedure, including intake and discharge procedures, I was further able to gain direct experience as a co-counselor. This work has benefited my ability to conduct group sessions and drafting progress notes for patient documentation. Likewise, my DARC 111 Introduction to Counseling course also provided me with the foundation skills needed to succeed in the more specialized counseling courses that I would enroll in later. In this particular course I learned such skills as attending, reflecting, active listening and mirroring.

Further, I gained the knowledge of the fundamental theories of addiction counseling and how this theory applies to actual counseling situations. Without this foundation, I would have lacked the skills needed to grow into the counselor that I am today. Another foundational counseling course I took was Research Methods for the Behavioral Sciences (SOC-PSY 410). In this course the focus was on the research side of the job instead of the field-work side of the job.

In this course I was given the essential skills of research procedures and design needed to gain a better understanding of my patients addictions and thus be able to better provide them with the counseling services they need to.