Patricia Myers

I love the optimism of the humanistic theories. I like to believe that given the option we will choose the high road and therefore do the right thing when the opportunity is at hand. I have always found it hard to continue to believe this in the face of cold hard reality. All I need do is scan the news headlines to challenge it. The news is filled with the grim dismal facts from suicide bombings, war and violence, and sexual abuse and slavery of children, just to name a few items on the endless list. So how can I continue to believe that there is a positive potential in the face of all the evidence to the contrary?

At the ACA conference last weekend I spent Saturday and Sunday completing career consults with fellow counselors and Masters students who are currently looking for work. Most were very optimistic about their future and all the possibilities. It was truly enjoyable to have the opportunity to meet people from across the country with different ideas, hopes and dreams for their future. I received numerous heartfelt thanks at the end of these sessions. I went into that experience with a quote from Mark Savickas as a foundation: “Career counseling that envisions work as a quest for self and a place to nourish one’s spirit helps clients to learn to use work as a context for self-development.” I was there to help in the self-development process. This was the good part of counseling and was energizing and very positive. Until it wasn’t.

A simple headline in the Sunday newspaper caught my eye this morning. The headline states: “Girls may learn math anxiety from teachers”. Having struggled with math anxiety for most of my life and having seen many other women with similar struggles, I decided to dig a bit deeper into this study. Out of my frustration in high school math class I can remember foolishly thinking “I’ll never use this in my real life!” This is a contemporary problem as many girls see math as irrelevant to everyday problem solving. This current research was funded by the National Science foundation and completed by researchers from the University of Chicago. The researchers assessed the level of math anxiety in first and second grade teachers and looked at the relationship of math achievement and gender stereotypes. Ah gender stereotypes!

I was watching Rachel Maddow’s show the other night as she interviewed Tracy Kidder. Kidder has written several books including a moving one about Haiti called “Mountains beyond Mountains” that details the work of Paul Farmer and the organization Partners in Health (www.pih.org). Kidder also wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece this week called “Country without a Net”. Please check out this information if you’re interested in learning more about Haiti. As Kidder talked with Rachel Maddow about a country that he clearly loves, he became more and more passionate about the ongoing needs of this cruelly destitute and misunderstood country.

I’ve had a wonderful break with my family. We’ve eaten too much, watched lots of movies, and kept up our tradition of holiday jigsaw puzzles. On television and in the local newspaper a different kind of puzzle has been emerging: the year end reviews. These include lists of the most popular men and women, the year’s top news stories, the best and worst celebrities, and of course, the best ways to lose that weight gained over the holidays. By completing these reviews we somehow can try to make sense of where we’ve been this past year and perhaps figure out where the new year will take us. It is difficult not to give in and to get a bit nostalgic in trying to put the personal pieces of the year end puzzle together.