Career Counselor

Hey! My name is Maggie and I am 28 years old. I work  at the Rosewood High School in Pennsylvania as a career counselor. It has been 4 years since I work at R.H.S and I really appreciate working there with the students. At the beginning, I never thought I would have wanted to become a career counselor. At first, I wanted to be an astronaut, for whatever reasons. Yet, when I was in high school, one day I went to see the school career counselor. We talked about my skills, my grades and about my interests. He proposed me few jobs, but they did not catch my interest one bit. After meeting few times, I realized that I wanted to be like him one day. I wanted to help others decide what they wanted to do as their jobs. For them not to be stuck and not knowing what they want to do like I was stuck in high school. Also, I wanted to help others in their problems. And now here I am as a career counselor.    

You might think that this job is a smooth relax one, but you are greatly mistaking. For instance, today during lunch break when I was eating, this kid came to me. He told me he was failing at school and that nothing in his life went well. As a career counselor, I tried to comfort this student, but in these sort of situation, the best way to help the student is to listen to what they have to say, which I did. I learned that his parents were alcoholic and that his older sister was in detox. Since my 4 years in R.H.S, numerous cases like this happened, sometimes even worse. Career counselors deal with all sorts of problems and situations. However, at the end of school, this other student came to me asking what job would she be best at. See? As a career counselor, ordinary problems as helping one know what they want to do in the future is one of the most common situation dealt with, but anything can happen.

As a career counselor, you must be people smart. It is really important that you know how to interact with others correctly, due to the fact that you will have to communicate and interact with others 99% of the time. Also, with this, you have to have excellent communication skills and be compassionate since you work with students that might be more fragile or in different situations than others. In addition, one of the most important skills is that you must have listening skills. It is extremely crucial that career counselors listen to their clients or students attentively. People like it when they can  talk about themselves and their problems without being judged. It makes them more comfortable and means they trust you. This exactly leads you to not judge the students. The students should always feel safe, welcomed, not judged, and comfortable when speaking with a career counselor. However, before becoming a licensed counselor, you must achieve and gain your bachelor and master degree which will take you approximately 5 years. Yet, it took me 6 years since the first year I took it in two years. Though it doesn't really matters since 4, 5 or 6 six years at school will still lead you at becoming a career counselor.