Diana Pitaru

Dreams are amazing! Don’t you just love dreaming? As a child, going to sleep was one of the things I was always looking forward to, because in my sleep I could always dream. Nobody ever told me “no”, or “don’t” or give me any negative reinforcement. I would wake up and try to remember my dreams wondering what they meant; I would then sit with my mother while she would try and help me interpret them. But then I grew up, and as a teenager I was not interested in spending all that much time with my mom. I forgot about dreams, dreaming, and all those moments when I would get a breakthrough. Then in college, it all came back when for a few semesters I started reading Jung.

Why is it that every time I open my mouth and say I am a student in an online university, I immediately have to follow up with a series of reasons, detailed explanations, etc? Am I not a “real” counselor if I attend school online? Is my education not “real”? Are the others (counselors) looking at me thinking that I am not as good as they are because they followed the traditional model of education and I don’t? Why am I afraid to tell potential employers that my degree comes from an online university, even though my program is CACREP accredited?

Away, away... Away from the humid, hot, sticky, muggy, unbearable Houston. Away so I can breathe. I finally claim dryness as a friend, as I re-adjust to the new climate. And speaking of a new climate - figuratively, of course- lately, I've been drinking a lot of boba tea. I love tapioca and so, I usually go out of my way to find teahouses to try their taro flavor beverages. I found this little place that one could easily overlook by classifying it either too shady or just unsafe. I went there anyways because something told me, I won't be disappointed; indeed I wasn't, but what I was going to get was more than just a delicious glass of boba tea: a lesson. Yep, a lesson I was hoping to receive ever since I arrived in America, a lesson of what being a minority means, and how it feels to be one.