Monica Band

I’ll warn you in advance…there is a lot of “alphabet soup” used in this post… I graduated with my Master’s degree from a CORE-accredited Rehabilitation Counseling program. The graduate school I attended also has a CACREP-accredited Clinical Mental Health Counseling (CMHC) program.

This year I am co-teaching a Research and Evaluation class which is comprised of a variety of clinical mental health and school counselor master’s students, as well as taking an advanced class in multivariate statistics and research methods. While sitting in a master’s level class, I can’t help but think back to my days as an undergraduate: sitting in a tiny, windowless room; crunching data into SPSS—only after our professor required us to do all the calculations by hand.

It is only a matter of time until distance counseling becomes a “thing.” It shouldn’t be of any surprise that counselors would figure out a way to use technology for services. Some of this isn’t new: many clinicians use e-mail to coordinate services, schedule appointments, collaborate with other providers, network among colleagues, and consult.

Counselor Awareness: Conversation Matters. Last weekend, I had the pleasure of catching up with some of my girl friends over brunch. When the conversation turned to me, I proceeded to share some things I am learning and currently experiencing in my doctoral program.

As counselors, we've all been asked the question (or maybe asked the question): What is your theoretical orientation?