Whenever I'm receiving a source to learn, I'm always blessing to be informed. Bible verses are suggested to me because I intend to get lost with the word of God in a surrounding story. After watching the entire TV series, "13 Reasons Why," I'm throwing myself back into high school and wondering how I could've reached out to classmates differently if I had read the original book published in 2007. Articles pop up on my Facebook newsfeed every day, and they just have to be at the right time for me to read them in searches of inspiration. At this point of autism awareness month, one article from the Medicine Times website called "My Son Has the Kind of Autism No One About - Term Life" stood out to me. It pointed my past transference (a psychological term of redirecting emotions that originated from childhood into a present time) into a new idea of a career path: I could go for my Master's Degree in Special Education.
It may sound biasing, but the very school I recently graduated from (University of Wisconsin- Superior) offers a graduate program in Special Education. I'm qualified by the minimum grade point average of 2.75, my volunteer work experience with children at one daycare and as a mentor for a residential treatment center, my baccalaureate degree in Psychology, and no criminal background. With the 30 course credits costing $15,000, the college has one of the most affordable graduate programs in the Midwest region. I would be coming back into an institution close to where I lived, and I can socialize more with the faculty that have known me and my education in the past. Someday, I would like to volunteer more as a note-taker or a tutor. Since I've worked with a few faculty members in the past two years, I could include them as work references if they approve. As far as my professional résumé goes, my extended volunteer work with children and adolescents will follow great examples to show for in future job interviews.
It will take one more year of education for me to complete 30 credits, which they add up to three semesters. Most of those courses have the durations lasting for seven weeks each. Some of the listed courses include adaptive instruction methods, family collaboration, reading issues, and a certified internship at the end of the program. Based on what I learned from my past social work and psychology courses, there are other courses that could either make me more natural at them or challenge me with the general objective of helping students with disabilities: Behavior analysis, reading/math interventions and research methodology. As I'll continue being an autism advocate, the challenges of bully prevention and meltdowns in classrooms would all have point towards the entire collaboration of families and the educational system. I find that very exciting as a career of providing more options for the students to succeed with any hopes of independence (high-functioning autism) and effective coping skills (listening to music while studying).
