Running head: WHO AM I 1

Who Am I:

Why I Chose Career(s) in the Helping Professions

Wilson R. Harvey

West Virginia University

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Introduction

It would be fair to say that I have been inundated with the counseling field since before I

was born; indeed, one could reasonably hypothesize that there is a genetic or epigenetic factor in

my career pursuits. As something of a personal expert on myself, however, I would contend that

though such conclusions do have their merits, they are only some of a bevy of factors that led me

to the career choice on which I have settled. A convergence of those familial influences with my

own encounters in my Christian faith, a strong collegiate education (as well as the opportunities

it allowed me for career exploration), and the people with whom I chose to associate could be

considered altogether as the factors that have led to me to my current career pursuit. As it stands,

I am interested in being equal parts secondary social studies educated and school counselor – at

different times – throughout my career, with an eventual move to working in higher education as

a teacher educator.

Influence of Family System

Though there were multiple influences that led to my stated career goal in the education

system, it is likely that none surpass the impact of my family system. Growing up, I had a stable

home life with non-divorced parents, both with college degrees (my father earned his B.A., while

my mother went on to earn her M.A.). We were financially secure but lived in what could be

considered the lower middle class, so I did not see the necessity of having a well-paying job –

rather, I learned the importance of having a job that paid well enough. It was my father who

taught me the value of hard work, working in a job that he did not wholeheartedly love but doing

so to the best of his ability. But while this lesson will come in handy, it was the lesson taught by

my mother, along with my lifelong mentor/family friend Dr. Ed Jacobs, that was perhaps most

influential to my career path.

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On the surface, this makes sense because both my mother and Dr. Jacobs are counselors,

and I have chosen the same profession (albeit primarily in the school setting, as opposed to their

working on the clinical side). What was more influential for me, though, was not the jobs they

chose but the passion they displayed, and still display, for what they do. I would venture to say

that my mother’s most valuable trait as a counselor is her incredible ability to care for others, an

ability that has earned her praise from friends, partners and even colleagues of mine throughout

my life. It is a part of her, and though she has set the standard impeccably high in that area, I

believe that I have taken after her to at least some degree. That laid the foundation for my

interest in the fields of education and counseling, where I believe there is immense potential to

help individuals while they are still moving through early development. On a similar note, there

is “no one on the planet,” as he likes to say, who loves counseling more than Dr. Jacobs. His

enthusiasm served both as a tremendous selling point for the counseling profession and a

constant reminder that I should not settle for a career about which I am not passionate.

Influence of Faith

My faith, as the philosophical grounds on which I base my core values, can be considered

another reason for my career choice. As a Christian, I believe in a God who has a love for the

people He has created. That love in turn lends itself to a zeal for social justice, a zeal that through

my faith I feel I am called to share. Around the same time as I became more serious about my

faith, I started to realize that many classmates and peers of mine had been in broken situations

beyond the school system. Though I certainly had my share of bad teachers, I also saw those who

were good, and they showed me what the school system could be for students who lacked

stability in the home both in the way they cared for me, let alone those students who had difficult
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home lives. With that God-inspired passion for social justice, I saw the education system as a

place where I could make my mark.

Influence of Higher Education

It was during my time at West Virginia Wesleyan College, however, that I started to see

the full realization of this vision. There, I began to grow not only my passion for teaching, but

for doing so in a way that improved upon much of the shortcomings I had seen in the system. I

also briefly flirted with the notion of working in administration, under the assumption that it

would allow me a chance to create change that impacted a wider range of people; though I

quickly disavowed administration as a career path, the notion of finding a way to impact a wider

net of people stayed in the back of my mind. Meanwhile, I went through my undergraduate

education in a unique situation, with excellent content classes (in history, sociology, psychology

– the traditional social studies coursework) but poor education courses, and education professors

who set a bad example of how to teach – though I would be remiss not to note the strength of my

cooperating teachers in the secondary school system. By the end of my time at Wesleyan, I had

started to see two new needs to which I was drawn in the education system. The first was a need

for school counselors. Though I had already decided by the end of my freshman year to earn a

master’s degree in school counseling at West Virginia University (WVU), my belief in the need

for mental health counseling was only reinforced when I saw students in both the high school

and middle school setting who were in need of more time-intensive and mental

health/trauma/addiction-informed counseling services were they to succeed in the school system.

Upon arriving at the program at WVU, I also realized from my undergraduate experience that

there exists a need for strong teacher educators (a view that was reinforced by negative reviews I

have heard regarding WVU’s undergraduate education department as well) that teach innovative
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methods and that teach educators to be mental health/trauma/addiction-informed at some level. I

now see this as perhaps the final piece to the puzzle, linking together my teaching and counseling

knowledge to culminate in an eventual career far down the road that allows me to have an even

greater positive influence over a large number of students than I originally imagined having in an

administration position.

Conclusion

These are, of course, only a few of the factors that have influenced my career path. It is

possible to have talked at length about individual teachers and professors, friends, ideological

moments of thought, and even unconsciously impacting variables that likely also played their

part in influencing my career vision as it exists today. Nevertheless, my family, my faith, and my

experiences in higher education stand in my view as the three primary influences that have

informed my career choice. I am thankful for the role they have played, for as yet I have no

regrets about the career on which I am about to embark, only passion and excitement. As a

school counselor, a teacher, and eventually a teacher educator, I feel that I have chosen three

careers that I can love and integrate to make a positive difference in young lives, and I could not

ask for more.