I used to have this hot pink keychain fob that said, “Woman On a Mission.” When asked what the mission was, I would reply that it was “Changing the world, one woman at a time.”
At the time, I was a licensed professional counselor, working mostly with women and teen girls, and although I didn’t realize it then, therapy is an awakening process. So I guess you could say that my mission was kind of like awakening a couple of dozen of sleeping beauties every few months.
Then I got a doctorate, my practice became more general, and I retired the keychain.
Now, I teach, and am in the last years of that career. In the beginning, I taught some upper-division classes, but have settled into making Intro to Psych my mission. My purpose there has been to bring psychology to students who aren’t majoring in it, have never met a psychologist before, and probably will never meet another one after my class ends. Specifically, I want to teach them how to live better and how to learn better: I really don’t care if, five years from now, they can tell you where the medulla is and what it does. They don’t need to know that any more than they need to know how to clean a carburetor in order to drive a car! What I care about is that they leave my class with a toolbox of psychological skills they can use in every stage and in every area their lives, personal and professional.
Segueing into retirement requires finding some other way to remain relevant and productive, which brings us to this blog. Now, my mission is to share what I have learned in the 52 years since the evening I decided, in a split second, to become a psychologist–with a wider audience. I’m kind of giving my clinical practice and my course away for free here. And if somebody learns something useful, if anything I say improves somebody’s life even a bit, then I will consider it a success.
(It’s weird when I think about it: In clinical practice, I had 12-25 people a week coming in. Teaching, I have 60-100 coming in twice every week! With a blog, the sky’s the limit.)
Maybe if I can find that key-chain I’ll start carrying it again.
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