Starting from Scratch, 10 years later.

Pin It

Well *sigh* deep subject. Life has really not gone the way I thought it would. I realized this weekend that I will have been a high school graduate for 10 years next month (yes, I had a June graduation). Granted you expect things to change in 10 years, especially when those years include a college career. Still, this'll be the third time that I will be altering my direction in a way that I never saw coming.

Fresh out of high school I was all about dance, until I had a handful of injuries, a couple growth spurts, and some feminine filling out that made it very obvious that even if I did fit the body type no sane company would take me on because I would be an insurance risk. So I flip-flopped my major and minor and graduated with a psychology degree.

Took a couple years off and headed back to school as a graduate student in the University of Missouri's Community Counseling program. It was a great program, but like all introductory classes should it made me think. Did I enjoy helping people? Yes. Did I like red tape and paperwork? No. Did I like counseling? Yes. Did I want to fight a system that put itself in direct odds with my personal moral and ethical codes? I don't know. It can be done, one of my professors was a wonderful Christian counselor who worked within that goofed up, secular worldview.  When we moved to Florida we lived about an hour away from a school that would actually transfer my graduate work. But I had already been on the fence and being away from my very young son for several days a week wasn't worth it.

The more I thought about it, prayed about it, and continued waffling back and forth about it. I decided that IF I wanted to continue that direction then it wouldn't be at a secular school, there was no point in throwing money into an education that I would only agree with/voluntarily retain about 40% of what they tried to feed me. So I began to look at seminary, downside of the counseling field, and the greatest upside, no one worth their salt will let you do it online. So unless we made a huge family move, yet again, it just wasn't an option.

More prayers later, and after more pondering I realized that although I'd make a great counselor in theory, I get too involved. I don't really do sessions, I do lunch. Maybe some more classes will be in my future, because I love learning and information; but I've come to realize that having a license will only inhibit who I am and open me up to all sorts of legal and "ethical" issues.

So now what? Well, I started up Milk Bubbles and have decided to just go for it. Hey, if I never try I'll never know and better to try and to flop than just play the bench. With that in mind I'm going back to school this Spring for Advertising/Marketing. Yep, back to undergrad. I don't think my pysch degree was a total waste of time, I can definitely use that with my new endeavor. Counseling skills and calling, well, I know plenty of people who have been wonderful counselors and mentors to me without having ever been awarded letters for it. So maybe one day, you'll see me Heather Schweich B.S., B.A., CMO...who knows?