As a young adult, I would have loved the type of guidance that I now offer to others, instead of having to learn the hard way for many years. When I was younger, I considered myself a “Renaissance Women,” with many interests and diverse skills.\u00a0 In high school, I was a creative straight-A student, a talented artist and writer, and showed quite a bit of promise. Everyone raved about my \u201cpotential\u201d and intelligence.<\/p>\n
Yet, I was not someone who fit perfectly into a box. I wasn\u2019t passionate about any one subject in high school, nor was I obsessed with one hobby or sport.\u00a0 I had talent and interest in art and writing, but I was concerned that it wouldn\u2019t earn me a paycheck.\u00a0 Creative pursuits, as much as I loved them, weren\u2019t even my sole passions. I was also interested in social sciences like Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Education, as well as the humanities like English literature and foreign languages.\u00a0 On the other hand, my family, armed with the pragmatism and sensibility of their generation, strongly encouraged me to do something that would get me a stable and good-paying job.\u00a0 At that time, the guidance counselor\u2019s role was primarily to push papers and sign documents- they were not there to guide and coach.\u00a0 I had no one to guide me for ME.<\/p>\n
With limited or conflicting guidance from others, I decided that I would major in graphic design as it seemed to be the one way that my art talent could be monetized. These were the rudimentary days of the Internet, but enough to have a very primitive search engine that allegedly \u201cfound\u201d all the schools that offered graphic design as a major according to region.\u00a0 I used nothing else to narrow down my search criteria and trusted this search engine blindly.\u00a0 Using the list of 10 schools that appeared in the search, I applied to 5 that allegedly had the intended major of graphic design in or near New York City.<\/p>\n
Fast forward to my freshman and software years.\u00a0 I took a few classes in graphic design, only to discover after fumbling around on a 1990’s right-handed mouse (I’m left-handed) that I not only preferred hands-on painting and drawing, but that I also could no longer deny my passion for the humanities and social sciences.\u00a0 At that point, well into my software year, I still hadn\u2019t settled on a major, and didn\u2019t know my options. I knew I needed a Ph.D. to monetize a social science degree, and I didn\u2019t think I was ready to be a traditional therapist.\u00a0 I enjoyed the creative arts, but I didn’t see them as lucrative enough for my strong value of financial security and I wasn\u2019t confident that I wanted to make a career out of them.\u00a0 After a fascinating semester abroad in Spain, I decided to major in Psychology and was fortunate to love it and do exceptionally academically.\u00a0 On graduation day, I graduated at the top of my class and received the Outstanding Student Award for Psychology.\u00a0 I also won credentials and recognition for an independent student research project.<\/p>\n
Upon graduating from college, several professors encouraged me to get a doctorate in Psychology.\u00a0 Tired of being a poor student and wanting a real paycheck (again, aligning with my values of financial security), I sought a “real job” instead.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t directly related to my major, but it was in the Human Resources recruiting department, and later marketing department, of a large investment firm in New York City.\u00a0 Realizing soon that neither job was for me because they didn’t align with my core values, I eventually went back to school to get my Master\u2019s in Education.\u00a0 I then became an English as a Second\/Foreign language teacher of high school, and lived and taught English to all ages in Japan, Ecuador, Spain, Venezuela, and the USA for many years. I simultaneously had various related careers in curriculum development, facilitation, and teacher training.\u00a0 More recently, applying my knowledge of international education and languages, I worked in International Admissions at Niagara University, until, finally, I embarked on my current path.<\/p>\n
It took me 20 years to find my path, which, if someone had offered me the guidance I needed much earlier, I would have saved myself thousands of dollars in student loan debt as well as unnecessary time, stress, backtracking, and disappointment. Two decades and a half later, I am still experiencing the consequences of not having the guidance I needed when I needed it.\u00a0\u00a0This is why I am passionate about giving others what I never had.\u00a0 I want to prevent future generations from lost time and money, and put them on the right path much sooner and faster to allow them to optimize their gift to the world in the most practical way they can.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a young adult, I would have loved the type of guidance that I now offer to others, instead of having to learn the hard way for many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"yoast_head":"\n