up. I had originally wanted to be a famous fictional writer or actor, but my family helped me understand that it would be prudent to have a more stable and secure career to fall back on in the event that challenges were had making it in these more competitive and uncertain career paths I had been contemplating. I didn’t perform very well academically in school growing up, so we didn’t really know if college was going to pan out for me or not. I started out at a local community college to get my feet wet in higher education to find my way and test the waters of my abilities. It was the guidance of a career decision-making class that was offered that helped make all the difference in giving me clarity about my interests and talents and what I wanted to pursue.
It began to dawn on me that I enjoyed helping people; my friends would often come to me with their problems and my mother suggested social work as an option. The real clincher was my discovery of the infamous sex educator, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Back in the 80’s, Dr. Ruth had a nationally syndicated talk show called “Sexually Speaking”, which was a weekend call-in radio show in which people would ask her questions about sex and I just loved it! My friends and I would gather together for parties and tune in to the show every week. I was hooked, and I say to myself, “Hey, I want to do that!” And that began my road to becoming a psychotherapist (Thank you, Dr. Ruth!). I became hungry for knowledge about psychology, exceled in school, and quickly earned my master’s degree in social work from Western Michigan University at the